Summer Placement Review

I had a fantastic time working in the Supply Chain unit this summer. The team in Gloucester were welcoming and I was able to have real responsibility even though I was only there for 12 weeks.

I felt very valued by the majority of my colleagues with some admitting that they were sceptical at the value of having placement students before they had interacted and worked with me. One colleague said he will now be asking for summer placement students himself and wished he has this year.

Despite my manager being extremely busy with an upcoming audit at the factory he was very engaged in my progress and was available for me to query things and present the work I had completed. Unilever have a great structure of support and we were assigned buddy's, contact managers as well as line managers so there were always people you could ask varoius questions to.

Most of the time I had the perfect balance of being busy vs being bored and found I was quite able to get fully engaged with my goals. Only towards the end of the placement did I find that things started getting very hectic and the addition of trying to hand over my +1 work added to the work load quite significantly.

I was given responsibility from day 1 and was given more and more responsibility as the weeks went on. It was great to come to the end of the placement and feel I had made a tangible difference over the 12 weeks and that the work I have completed will have a lasting impact.

The placement was not wholy relevant to my degree as an Engineering student in Supply Chain but I learnt valuable people management skills and project management skills that will aid my potential as a manager in the future.

The office environment was on the whole a really positive and nice place to be each day. I made some good friends in the colleagues I worked with and found everyone approachable. As I imagine with all office environments at times there were small arguements and rifts but not enough to be an issue.

It was very organised most of the time but there were a few parts that could have been better. It took as few days to get out pass cards sorted out and also our IT functions. Other than that however it was pretty good.

My manager invested a lot of time to discuss with me different aspects of the business and decisions I had made and what could have done better. In 12 weeks I don't think there could have been much more investment into me.

I really hope to get onto the UFLP (graduate scheme) there and find out in the next week or so as to whether I have been fast tracked to the assessment centre. I do not know how many people are successful or have been in previous years.

The social scene amongst the other placement students was good. We all got on very well and I am very glad I had the placement students I had at Gloucester. It was nice to have young people there to talk to and hang out with I down times at work.

The living cost was 100 pounds a week where I lived and I spent around £40 a week on food. Socialising was cheaper than London which is always a benefit.

The nightlife was very much a pubs and bars vibe which was really nice to socialise with people from work. Cheltenham round the corner also provided a more lively nightlife for the bigger occasions.

Unilever do a 5 aside football every Wednesday which I quickly joined. This was great fun and a nice way to keep active. there were quite a few opportunities to socialise with colleagues and everyone was so friendly. If I had been there for longer I would have looked to get involved in a more permanent outside work sports club. There seemed to be a lot of opportunity to do so in the area.