Purchasing Intern Review

BMW treat you as a valued member of their team straight away - I was given lots of high responsibility jobs which made me feel trusted within the team. The only negative I would say would be that there was a few times when I wasn't that busy (Although not very frequently).

My close team in particular made it very easy to fit in and get along with. I am normally very shy, however with my team i felt like I could be myself and have a laugh and joke with them. They also made it very easy to ask questions when I was stuck.

For the first month of my placement I was given a handover with the previous intern, this made my tansition a lot easier as I could ask her questions whenever needed. After that I sat in a 4 with my team so whenever I needed help with anything they would be more than happy to help.

Purchasing have peaks of being busy and then sometimes I would have barely anything to do. I was given some big tenders to faciliate which took up a lot of my time and then some admin/departmental tasks to fill in the quiet times, so I found things to do most days.

At the start my team were getting used to me and would give me small tenders to work with. However 4 months into my placement my manager trusted me with a large tender, this was a great confidence boost for me as I felt as though I had got a handle on the job role quite quickly.

I strongly believe that my placement year has given me a lot of skills I can transfer to university, such as time keeping, responsibility, team working, independant working etc. but I also think it has been priceless for my CV and future interviews as I have now got a lot more experience within a professional environment

The office has highs and lows like most. With the current COVID-19 situation it has been strange working from home but we keep in contact with daily SKYPE calls. Generally in the office you can go for a chat with whoever you want if you're stuck or jsut feeling a bit down but then there are also places to go if you need some space.

To begin with HR didn't give much information, other than a start date. This made it difficult to arrange accomodation with other intens also on a placement year. Once I started my placement and was in the hands of my team, everything flowed very easily and I knew what I was meant to be doing

I was actively encouraged to shadow in different departments, which meant I got a taste for different roles within BMW. This helped greatly with future career choices as I was still undecided on what path I wanted to take. All departments were willing to have me and took the training/shadowing seriously which was nice.

If I lived closer to Oxford or Farnborough I would 100% return to work for BMW as I believe the company looks after their employees and the opportunities to move departments and roles are very good. Although they do say at the start that their intern retention rate is very low.

They arrange intern socails every Thursday night as Friday is a half day at work. They are great at the start to get to know other interns and form a friendship group, however as the year went on not many people joined, but they were good to form an intial group if you have moved to oxford for the placement

Cost of living in Oxford is EXPENSIVE, my rent on my flat was about £600 a month with bills and the social scene is very much London pricing. Although the wage for this internship is ok, you do have to budget quite well to get by (with a good social life) each month

Oxford city centre has a couple of good clubs, as it is a univeristy city there are a lot of student nights during the week (if you can hack getting in at 2am and getting to work by 8am). There is also a good strip of bars and restaurants along Cowley road.

Some of the interns starting up a weekly football match, which my flatmate attended most weeks - he enjoyed it. There was also talk of starting up a Netball team but nothing came about of that. All depends on the interns of that year what the social/activity life will be like