Service Manager Review

I found working at Focusrite a great experience. Particularly when I was on placement the company was smaller so I found myself interacting with a lot of other departments to get my job done.

I had personal differences between myself and the colleague I spent most time working with which did affect how I felt day-to-day. Everyone outside of this one colleague was very welcoming though, and the company ethos was very positive overall.

By my managed, absolutely. There was always support here. I have no doubt any placement student here now would have a similar experience.

It was busy, and the company was growing so quickly year on year that even within my placement I saw huge changes to the company. This meant taking on more challenges regularly, increasing my workload. Finding a balance here was tricky as I had to find my own path here often, something that I feel was the case for a lot of people 8 years ago, and something I can see being different for placements now.

In effect I was running things in the role I was doing. Defining what was being done, how to do it, and generally working with almost full autonomy. Approvals were still in place, but some of the processes I worked on back then have evolved and are still being used now.

This placement set me up with a job once graduated, and what I learnt on placement allowed me to undertake a dissertation on a subject I found interesting in my final year. The general business skills learnt about how the company operates have also proved to be valuable life skills.

My placement was in one room, generally working on my own so the atmosphere was quiet a lot of the time. This was a unique situation however, and as the company is much larger now I can't see a similar placement work environment existing again.

This placement came about through the Unviersity of Surrey, and they had their own portal for getting students onto placements which automatically contacted all employers with your CV once you'd ranked the preferences. Other than writing a CV and ranking the employers, I didn't have to do much other than turn up to the interviews. Interestingly, this placement I ranked as about 25th on my list of preferences, once I'd had the interview I realised I should have ranked it significantly higher.

A difficult one. On one hand I was almost entirely autonomous, which taught me plenty as if I didn't figure it out I would fail, so I had to learn. This did suit my personality though so I found this one of the best ways to learn. Looking now at my team, there is a huge focus on personal development, and this does continue through the company so I believe this would be something that is invested actively in now.

Absolutely a great place to work, and the way we're trying to work is to constantly improve how we do things and improve efficiency. Vs my peers outside of work, I hear them complain about their jobs regularly, and this is something I find bizarre as I've only ever enjoyed my job.

There were only two of us on placement at the time, but I found myself adopted into the Tech Support social events regularly.

I lived in Guildford and commuted to High Wycombe. This was particularly expensive, and Wycombe now has almost got London prices on Rent and in Pubs.

Lots of pubs in Wycombe, they tend to go in/out of fashion over time, but there are generally always a few really good regular ones that are worth visiting. Avoid the nightclubs unless you're into that sort of thing, but I never was.

Neutral, there are a few things people arrange like Football once a week, but I'm not a footballer so these passed me by generally. I have recently found some like minded swimmers though and we tend to share lanes in the pool when going on our lunch breaks, but I'm not aware of too much going on outside of work.