System Integration Analyst Review

I highly enjoyed my placement as although I was given a huge amount of responsibility and was constantly being challenged the support from my manager was excellent. I learned vast amounts about the industry, project management skills and developed my commercial awareness as well as my engineering knowledge.

I felt highly valued by my colleagues as I felt that I was performing a key task in the department, rather than merely just making cups of coffee. I was treated like a project manager rather than an intern.

Throughout my placement I was responsible for running and organising my own projects. In this role I was required to be very self-starting and was required to use my initiative to solve most issues which I encountered. However whenever I needed guidance or advice my manager was very helpful and provided the right level of support whilst still allowing me to develop my problem solving skills.

As it was my own responsibility to manage my projects and my day, I was usually very busy. However I found this challenge very enjoyable as my day was very varied - from customer meetings, engineering testing to visiting the shop floor.

I was given a huge amount of responsibility as I was solely responsible for the delivery of the projects which I was working on. Throughout the course of my placement I successfully delivered over 30 projects, with a combined value of several million pounds. I was also trusted to represent the company by myself and visited suppliers and hosted customers as the sole GE representative.

I feel that the communications, business and interpersonal skills developed on my placement will be of huge help in my degree and my future career.

Atmosphere could be tense if it was a busy time but usually relaxed and friendly. All colleagues are always willing to offer help and have a chat.

Partly well organised. GE recieve feedback from previous years to see where they could improve. There were a few challenges e.g. lack of training and took a while to get computers but overall ok.

Investment was satisfactory. Again there are lots of GE online training courses which were useful but getting funding for other courses could be difficult. They invest in you for a solid future but could offer more training outside of the on-job necessities.

Very good, you can meet many people who have been interns and are now higher up in the business.

There were multiple other interns at my site along with apprentices and interns from Oil and Gas in the same building. We spent a lot of time together talking, helping and shadowing each other to gain exposure of multiple businesses.

This was fairly high as Bristol is a very desirable place to live and therefore the prices are very similar to those in London.

Really good as there are two big unis in the city and therefore there are plenty of options.

GE runs a huge amount of volunteering schemes from helping in local schools to competing in charity sports events. There was also a fairly active sports club.