Engineering Undergraduate Review

I thouroughly enjoyed my placement at AW. I was provided with numerous opportunities to prove myself and trusted to undertake roles of responsibility within the organisation.

For the most part colleagues are friendly, willing to help and welcoming of placement students.

You have a year long supervisor in HR who is extremely helpful and friendly, from settling you in at the start to giving you regular reviews to track progress. Day to day you have an engineering supervisor in the relevant department. These are usually of a minimum seniority level and so there expertise and experience is excellent. They are willing to help when needed, but encourage you to use initiative and work for a solution as oppose to handing it to you.

Opportunities are presented to you throughout the placement, if you take these opportunities and have a positive attitude towards them then there is more than enough work to do. I adopted this attitude and am very happy with the workload.

AW runs some projects which young employees are encouraged to get involved in to aid career and personal development, these are not necessarily technically challenging but do demand other important skills. There are opportunities to lead these projects or just be involved.

The skills I have learned will help me greatly. I was already very career driven and focused before my placement but now there is more clarity in what I have to do to achieve what I want through the knowledge gained working for a large aerospace company. I have also arranged to complete a report in conjunction with AW for one of my final year modules at University.

I have mixed views on this. One office I was in was very lively, we went for lunch everyday together and I made some lasting friends there. The other however was much quieter, still friendly, but less lively. I wouldnt say it had a negative effect on my experience as I am sure this is just a fact of professional life.

The placement was organised well and you knew what was needed 99% of the time.

I was sent to the companies HQ in Italy, worked at the National Composite Centre in Bristol 3 days a week towards the end of my placement, attended conferences etc. I was also taught softwares when I needed to know them without hesitation. This company seems to invest a lot in professional development, even with undergraduates!

I think I have a reasonably good chance of being taken on to the graduate scheme. If you take all opportunities provided to you and perform relatively well in them there is not much more you can do. AW provides the chance to do this.

There is a young employees association and graduates association (both of which undergrads are welcome to) which puts you in contact with a lot of people. From day one we were encouraged to mingle with fellow undergrads and put into projects together were we formed a great bond and professional working relationship.

Being from the north I was relatively worried that living expense might be considerably more, but it wasnt! I paid £375 per month for a 1 bed flat on a very nice housing estate. Drinks/food was an average price, no complaints!

Yeovil is not a big place, and so the nightlife isnt great, but its still possible to have a great night out! there are big cities all arouind and you can easily arrange to go out to them.

There is loads to do in and around Yeovil, and with the young persons committee there is things happening at least every fortnight. We went paintballing, karting, night out in Cardiff, Boardmasters in Newquay, the list goes on...