Emissions & Test Technology Engineer Review

I really enjoyed my placement, it gave me a first taste in to how it feels to work as a full time engineer. I was given support throughout but still given the freedom to work on my own and make my own decisions.

I felt valued in the projects that i was heavily involved in or leading, but there were times when I felt I was overlooked for being a student.

My mentor within the group was always there to support me in my work, often scheduling meetings to track my project progress and offering to help with any issues.

The first few months of my placement I did not have much work to do and it became a little bit tedious, but for the last 3/4 of the placement I was given much more responsibility and became much busier with constant projects, but never too busy.

I was given full responsibility for several projects and was trusted to spend serious amounts of company capital if I felt it was necessary.

The main skills that I will be taking back to university are enhanced communication skills as I often needed to convey ideas/processes to a variety of people from different departments, so have to tailor how I talk to each separately. I have also improved my time management to meet project deadlines and ensure I am constantly making progress.

Enjoyable environment to work in with a mix of experience and youth.

The placement was set up quite well, security and health and safety induction was carried out during induction on the first 3 days, which are not the most interesting days.

Rather than specific training, I learnt by being around the equipment constantly and asking questions. There were times when training was rpovided for the group but I was not added to the list of participants and so missed out.

There does appear to be employment prospects within the company as recently many graduates have been hired in the department. I would gladly accept a job role in the department but it would depend upon how full the department is becoming.

I was told that the social scene in previous years between placement students was very good, but this year it was very poor with no-one organising anything. I did however go out with the department many times and this was good.

The cost of living and socialising is no more expensive than anywhere else in the UK.

There is not a lot of nightlife in the area where I worked or lived as the area is not a student zone like city centres are.

The company runs voluntary community action groups to try and improve local public facilities, also visiting local schools to teach basic engineering principles. There are some sports clubs such as football and badminton within the company but organisation of these can be quite poor.