Internal Technical Engineer Review

Relaxed atmosphere, open plan office and an emphasis on meeting and talking to everyone meant that we bedded in quickly and formed strong working and personal relationships with many of the guys in the office

You get given responsibility from day one, there's no tea-making duty or copier-boy jobs. I was responsible for driving a UK wide product line sales project, you are expected to contribute to the business and everyone treats you as being capable of doing the job.

From start to finish by having weekly project updates with project and intern managers and also having quarterly management presentations to the UK management team. I also had a field engineer to work under and support me.

Workflow varies as you go through each area of the business. When working with technical support there were periods of rush and periods of quiet and work was reactive. In my sales role I've been able to be proactive - independent research is generally quite manageable and then there are periods (for example coming up to management meetings and deadlines) that would be extremely busy.

This internship has been great for allowing me the opportunity to affect the business in a very real and measurable way, both in the time I've been here and in an advisory role which I hope will continue to benefit the business after I leave

Given me the opportunity to see various areas of engineering business. Allowed me to use my existing skills, gain new ones and identify and work on weaknesses. Given me the opportunity to network and gain confidence speaking and competing in high pressure, technical environments

Relaxed, friendly, open-plan, talk to anyone at any time. A lot of people work from home so sometimes it was quiet.

As a whole well organised but is still in the process of being refined and changed. The projects were defined at a high level but as I began to evolve in the role, the project scope and focus shifted and changed slightly to encompass different or added objectives. You get the chance to operate in 3 or 4 different job roles though which is very unique for a year out.

Week long training course which immerses you in the product portfolio with labs and demonstrations. Extensive pre-study training modules covering everything technical and sales related. Continued advancement through weekly/bi-weekly updates with my intern manager. Customer communications workshop focusing on communication, time and project management, issue resolution and objection handling. Presentation and public speaking practice. CRM training.

Not massively impressive - there's no graduate placement scheme although this is compensated because as an intern we'll be first on the list for any foundation level job openings within the company. I believe they're working to improve this system but the intern scheme is relatively new so it will probably be a few years down the line. Reading isn't a massively exciting place to live either.

There are only 3 interns hired per year but became pretty tight knit.

Expensive. London prices with none of the culture/atmosphere.

Average for a large town like Reading. Very little that you won't find anywhere else - all chain pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants in the centre of Reading

I joined a Gaelic football club but couldn't train due to recurring injury. There are various other activities and clubs in Reading but I wasn't involved with any.