Summer Placement Student Review

I have thoroughly enjoyed my placement. I built up a lot of new skills and experiencednew things rather than being stuck in a lab all day. The flexitime scheme in particular lets you manage your own time to something that suits you (although you are told not to take the ****).

My colleagues were very friendly and understanding to me and my assigned buddy was helpful for me to settle in.

My line manager and mentor for the project I was on gave me the advice and support I needed and were always willing to lend an ear to me. However, as it was the summer the people I needed to talk to went on leave for a long period of time.

There were periods where I had many things to do, and at other times I was stuck or bored with something with little progress being made. It's a mixed bag.

I was given a sufficient amount of responsibility and the targets I needed to make were realistic.

I had the opportunity to conduct a 45 minute presentation with my buddy (she was working on the same project as me), attend internal training courses within the company and went to a conference to learn more about the cyber security industry. These kind of activities will not only help me in academia but for the whole of my working life.

It was very calm and friendly, not a very high pressure environment. The people I was with were friendly, relaxing and very funny. I would often chat to them during breaks. The lab I was in was very small and as a result I did not feel very intimidated as there was not a lot of people.

At the start it was a very well organised internship, but there were shortcomings. During the induction phase, I did not know that I had to attend something called 'welcome wednesday', and the room I thought it was in got changed! The company does give you a new starter checklist which you go through yourself to get the required information, but I needed a lot of help with this! During the second half of the placement, some certain dealines given for tasks were quite sudden and this may have affected the quality of our output. However, I was not too phased by it as I am quite organised anyway.

They allowed me to attend a conference and internal training courses, which was all allowed if my line manager permitted it. The company are always willing to invest in their own employees, funding their professional development towards a chartership, for example. It was not compulsory that I had to do the above things, but it was good to do things that were different and outside my comfort zone.

If you do well enough on the placement, the company may consider sponsoring you throughout the rest of your degree program. In return you will need to work for the conpamy for a fixed number of years. the company really does want to train their staff to be the best in their fields, so the people here work their way up via a level framework when certain objectives are met.

There is a decent social life. Salisbury offers plenty of restaurants, pubs and shops so co-workers would often hang out at some these places. The company has something called STEPS, "run by new entrants for new entrants". The committee set up activities and talks that new entrants may want to go to to learn more about the role of the company and the MOD. Attendance to these events is optional, but are worth looking at.

There are people in Salisbury willing to let out a room. I managed to find a room which costs £400 a month, had unrestricted access to most things in the house and my landlady was nice enough to wash my clothes for me :) (Don't get the wrong idea; I know how to wash and iron my laundry...). I could even walk up to bus stop close by each morning and take a bus going straight to work. I got very lucky this summer. The company does have its own accomodation but am not sure if they let them out to certain people.

I'm not much of a party goer, but there are plenty of nightclubs and restaurants that open late in salisbury that people can go to. Public transport in the area does run late on the weekdays and I did not get into any trouble. I think previous feedback on this site has said that there was little nightlife which is a fair point, but there is some!

Someone was nice enough to take me in this lightweight aircraft and fly around in a circuit which was great fun (I was very nervous about it. How stupid I was...). I went to nandos with people from multiple teams within the company and have a couple of drinks with them afterwards. The people here are not boring at all :)