Manufacturing Engineer Review

I enjoyed my job, during my placement I was involved with a large range of meaningful projects which gave me good experience at being able to decide where I would want to progress with my future career. The site as a whole had a good atmosphere with local social activities arranged more informally by staff than the sites HR.

During my placement, I felt very valued by my colleagues and felt like a useful part of the team. Much of the daily work and project work I completed were projects that would be completed by the team members if I was not present. As well as they gave help and encouragement when needed.

I received a lot of guidance from both of my managers. My initial manager had worked at the company for other 20 years, so he was the person on site who knew the most about how the products are manufactured and the design reasons behind them. Meaning any questions about any of the products he was very helpful. My second manager had a large amount of experience with other companies so could also provide a large amount of insight into alternatives to what was happening at the site.

On a daily basis, I was busy but not overwhelmed. I was managing multiple ongoing projects at the same time. So this would be work either as part of a team or on my own. Along side this work I would also be doing more daily tasks, which meant smaller projects to be completed. My placement consisted of very little day to day work and instead was mostly project based.

During my placement I was given a large amount of responsibility. I would either have full control of the project or I was a joint manager with my direct line manager. This would mean I would be responsible for organising and arranging the project, ensuring it meets the projects deadlines and targets. I would also be fully involved with all work which would be done outside of the site if the project required it.

Throughout my placement I did not receive a huge amount of technical training due to most of the CAD skills were already taught from my university. However I did develop a large amount of soft skills which could only be experienced during work. Such as presentation, organisational, time management and communication skills. These will all be useful again in my final year at university and in further employment. As well as part of the Eaton Internship program there are training days with all UK interns to help develop these skills, which I thought were very beneficial.

The atmosphere in my office was split. We were at the main doorway into the office so a large amount of people would be walking through this area. This at best did mean that the area I worked was never a dull place to work with things always happening between all of the different departments, however I struggled to concentrate on the work at points due to all of the distractions.

My placement was reasonably well organised, they had ideas for which major projects could be completed or worked on by myself at the start till the end of the placement. As well as they knew what smaller project I could initially complete to gain experience at the start. However my placement initially did not have a manager due to no manager being present in my placements department which is why this score is slightly lower.

Eaton as a part of the Intern program invested a large amount with a selection of UK intern training days for subjects such as communication, teamworking, organisation and time organisation skills. These were a great experience to gain some experience into the softer skills gained during work. However on a site to site basis, these can vary massively. I was lucky to be offered a personal development but having a two week working experience in Germany, as I was interested in completing a masters there. However this was not a guarantee of the placement.

I would be interested in a future with Eaton, however they do not have a process to hold talent similar to other companies. Usually after a summer or year long placement is compete sometimes they offer a graduate position to hold onto the talent. Eaton does not offer this at all to anyone on the program. Instead they have to go through the process again as a graduate. As well as the opening of the graduate scheme is very late relative to every other company, therefore many other jobs will offer first compared to Eaton.

This placement had a really good social scene between all of the interns as well as other workers on site. This placement was located close to Nottingham city, which meant 3 of the 4 interns were living in Nottingham. This allow easy socialising with almost weekly events done in Nottingham. This helped make the placement a lot more enjoyable.

The cost of living in our area was very low, 3 of the interns on site managed to find a property that all 3 of us lived in. This was very manageable compared to our wage, then compared to the general cost of living meant that we had a large amount of disposable income every month, which could be spent or saved as we wanted.

Nottingham was an amazing place to live in as a student. A huge selection of bars, cafes, night clubs and just general activities to do. Once of the best cities I have ever lived in. This was one of the largest recommendations for this placement as this will drastically improve your social life outside of the job.

The were activities arranged at the placement, these included monthly dinner club and a running club. I got involved in the monthly dinner club were 30 people from the site would all go out for a meal after work together. This was a great way to talk to other people in other departments you normally would not speak too. However this all arranged off the cuff, with nothing to do with HR.