Design Placement Student Review

I had a great year at Cummins. My team were very welcoming, and I was very friendly with a lot of the other placement students. I had a unique end to my placement through having to work from home due to the Corona Virus but overall it was a very valuable experience.

I felt very valued by my colleagues, I was given the opportunity to support many different projects and departments, and got a great insight into Cummins and their various products. A lot of engineers I worked with were vocal about the work I did, and expressed their appreciation, including upper management which made me feel valued.

During the placement there were both elements of learning on the job, as well as doing relevant training. Everyone in my team was very happy for me to ask them questions, and when I showed enthusiasm for different methods and techniques they were happy to spent time with me to go over this.

At the start of the placement it was quite slow, I was mostly busy with training and waiting on access for applications. After that it was up and down, some days it was very busy with tight deadlines, others I got a chance to catch up on admin and further training.

I did feel like there was an element of having to prove myself to show my colleagues that I am competent engineer. Once I was able to show them, I was offered and sought out various opportunities to make extremely valuable contributions to Cummins' products which I would have never expected I would do before I started my placement.

The responsibilities and customer exposure I was given have been hugely valuable to my development. My confidence has increased through having to present to a variety of engineers and partners of Cummins. My time management skills and professionalism will definitely help me during university and after I graduate. We recieved student development training to help with conflict and how to best work with and lead people. I feel like this has been very valuable as well.

I had a great friendship with some of the other placement students which gave the office an enjoyable atmosphere for me. I also built a good relationship with many of my team which made the working day good fun. Every week or so someone would bring in cake for thier birthday which was a nice surprise.

The student development side of the placement was quite well organised, but the work not so much. I felt like many of my jobs were ad-hoc rather than structured, and my support was mainly need as-and-when. This was a good way to work on as many projects as possible but meant I was not able to work on a continuous project which would have been nice.

Location was the main issue for me, I might be interested in working for them in different office in Europe or else where, but not Darlington. I had the chance to work with a colleagues in Germany and the US, and working in that capacity in the future would definitely interest me.

~£250 a month for rent. £2/3 for pints.

Nightlife was average, there were a few clubs but nothing special. Me and a couple placement students went out in Newcastle a few times which was great fun and there are late trains able to take you back to Darlington. During the day there are a lot of choices for pubs and bars.