Well, what a lively couple of weeks! It’s been tricky finding the time to do applications along with uni work (my social life is pretty much in tatters at the moment) but I’ve managed to slot a couple more in. This may or may not have included a 23:53 submission on Thursday night for a certain well-known motor company (who’s deadline was so near I could practically hear the ticking). Unlike any of the other companies I’ve applied to so far, this one provides detailed job descriptions for each of the roles available. This was a great help to me, and now that I have a job title in my head I’m much more determined to see the application through; one way or another.

Company A (see my last post) turned out to be a bit of a dead end, but not in a bad way. I had a chat with the Chief Operating Officer over the phone, and in the end it was the credit crunch that let me down (isn’t it always?). Although they would have considered taking me on full-time, they were apprehensive about investing a lot of time and money in a placement student who might disappear after 40 weeks, never to be heard of again. From the sounds of it they didn’t have much work for me to do anyway, and keeping busy was definitely one of the criteria I had in my head when I started down this path. We mutually agreed that it was best that I kept on looking, but the experience has definitely not put me off other SMEs.

The issues with Company B have been sorted, and the aptitude tests were just as tricky as I had imagined. For someone with A-Level maths none of the questions were difficult, but the less-than-generous time limits created quite a bit of pressure. Just as the introduction had warned me, I didn’t manage to complete all of the sections. Despite this I’m confident that I’ve done well enough, now it’s just fingers crossed that I’ll get through to my first assessment centre.