Things are moving fast, and I now have my first invitation to an assessment centre! It’s quite a way to travel, and I’m not looking forward to the 2:00AM start, but it’s for a role I want so I think it’ll be worth it. I’ve been told that there are two face-to-face interviews involved, which I have to admit I’m not looking forward to (plenty of espresso at the station methinks). Other than that, I’m looking forward to it.

One other company got back to me one morning last week at 9:00AM, for an on-the-spot phone interview (what is it with these companies and early starts?) which actually went down surprisingly well! Despite not having a detailed knowledge of the company in question, my interviewer seemed happy with my answers: she even gave me the date of the assessment centre and told me I had a good chance of getting through. Fingers crossed this isn’t something she says to everyone

I’ve done one more application since my last post, which was a pretty standard affair to be honest. I’m used to the process by now, and have a bank of prepared answers making things speedier. I’d definitely recommend keeping a copy of any applications you make, both because it’s useful for making further applications, and because it always helps to know exactly what you’ve told a company when (if) they call you back

Having been at Logica for 4 months now I can safely say it has been a good and worth while experience so far. When I joined the company I didn’t have any idea on what the job would be like. As Logica is project based I did not have a set role and was under a very general role. I found that being under a general role helped me do what I wanted to do and shape my own experience at Logica rather than Logica shaping my experience for me.

In the first week of my placement I was asked to help our marketing department with various tasks. I found myself doing various administration tasks as well as design. This was a nice experience to bring me into the company. I then went onto working for the resourcing department and did IT related tasks for our internal system as well as the client (Shell). This project was a springboard for my next project that I pro-actively found.

Currently I am working on a technical project on a financial transaction system. When I was accepted for the role it seemed like a daunting task, however getting exposure to ‘industry standard’ work has helped me in understanding the core components within my degree and modules at university finally seem to make sense! So to summarise I wasn’t originally being challenged as much as I wanted to but I am currently on a Java based project that is helping me learn lots of new skills that I can take back to university with me.

Throughout the ages the 13th November has been a momentous day for many. In 1955 Whoopi Goldberg was born, in 1971 the American space probe, Mariner 9, became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars) and now in 2008, we have a monumental occasion to celebrate for many years to come…. RateMyPlacement.co.uk received its 1,000th review, exactly 600 days after the first review was submitted back on the 13th March 2007!

Wow, what an occasion, we had to celebrate…

We thought long and hard about an appropriate gift for the reviewer and after realising a £1,000 cash prize was probably a bit over the top we decided the most appropriate prize would be 1,000 grams of sweets! On to www.sweetieworld.co.uk we went and after 10 minutes of click happy excitement we had ordered Phillippa Gregory from the University of Birmingham her prize for this review of her time at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Here’s our shopping basket and a photo of her enjoying her prize!

• Black and Red – 5 bars
• Black Jacks – 100g (3.5oz)
• Bugs ‘n’ Grubs – 100g (3.5oz)
• Cadbury Chomp – 5 bars
• Chocolate Raisins – 100g (3.5oz)
• Cola Millions – 1 pack
• Fizzy Cola Bottles – 100g (3.5oz)
• Freddo – 5 bars
• Fruit Salad – 100g (3.5oz)
• Haribo Jelly Beans – 100g (3.5oz)
• Large Foam Bananas – 8 bananas
• Lemon Bon Bons – 100g (3.5oz)
• Maoam Minis – 10 sweets
• Mini Cola Wham bars – 25 sweets
• Mini Love Hearts – 20 packs
• Princess Marshmallows – 125g (4.4oz)
• Refreshers chews – 100g (3.5oz)
• Tom & Jerry Candy Sticks – 5 packs

RateMyPlacement.co.uk thinks that sweets should be eaten as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle, and no students were harmed in the awarding of this prize.

Thanks very much to all those people who took part in our Enterprise Week Challenge 2008. The winner of the challenge was the group who had the most members by 9pm on Sunday 23rd November. It was a quality effort all round with the 8 groups inviting an amazing 21,568 people in total! However there has to be only one winner, and that was Group 7 who ended with 910 members, closely followed by Group 2 with 825 members. Congratulations go to Vanessa, Laura, Jessica and Vicki who’ll be flying out to Mallorca in March ’09 to enjoy Spring Break UK!

The final standings are shown below.

1. Group 7 – 910 members (Loughborough University)
2. Group 2 – 825 members (University of Leeds)
3. Group 6 – 299 members (University of Birmingham)

We really appreciate you all taking part, and I hope the winners enjoy their trip to Spring Break UK!

If you are keen to work on your tan in late March and get involved in Spring Break UK check out their website for more information – http://www.sbuk.com/.

 With just over a day of the RateMyPlacement Enterprise Week Challenge left (click here to find out more about it) the current standings are shown below. It’s tight at the top so the battle is on to win those 4 tickets for Spring Break UK 09.

The Top 3 with 1 day to go are shown below;

1. Group 7 – 559 members (Loughborough University)
2. Group 2 – 527 members (University of Leeds)
3. Group 6 – 227 members (University of Birmingham)

Just 29 hours to go, its going to be tight…

 

The RateMyPlacement Enterprise Week Challenge kicked off on Wednesday with 8 teams vying to win 4 tickets Spring Break UK, held on the beaches of Mallorca.

The rules are simple, get as many friends to join your special RateMyPlacement Facebook group as possible, and the team with the most members on Sunday at 9pm wins the tickets. The first 24 hours have shown some great entrepreneurial touches, we have had rules being bent (all entrepreneurs need to bend some rules), other groups have offered 2 of the 4 free tickets to SBUK as an incentive to make friends join their group and even money being offered to one lucky member of the group if they win… 

Top work all round.

The Top 3 after Day 1 are shown below;

1. Group 2 – 326 members (University of Leeds)
2. Group 7 – 259 members (Loughborough University)
3. Group 1 – 177 members (University of Sheffield)

There are still over 3 days to go so it is all to play for…

Well, I’ve been at my new site for 2 weeks now and yeah it’s going alright, I’m enjoying it a lot more mainly due to the fact I have a specified role and am learning new skills. I’m working with CAD systems now, putting CAD drawings onto templates of steels sheets ready for laser, plasma and water jet cutting machines to cut different shapes of steel out for the customers. Apparently the number of mistakes down to the CAD system has been substantially high over the last few years and so I’ve been brought in to help reduce the number of mistakes so it should be quite a good experience. Also the staff at my new site are a lot younger and so I feel that I fit in better here, and lots of staff nights out might be on the cards which should be good. Work would be much better if I didn’t have to start at 8.30 every morning but hey at least I’ve not been made redundant from this job just yet.

I feel I have settled into work much more recently, I’m now getting into more of a routine and feel I know more about the business. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been preparing for the launches of the about 18 of the new Deli Bar products, so ensuring everything is correct on the computer systems and getting all of the storyboards and product info sheets in place.

This has been a hectic time, although I have enjoyed this. I have now taken on the role of setting out the taste panel both in the morning and the afternoon as the factory is getting busier due to the Christmas period approaching. This has taken up a lot of my time as all of the paperwork and preparation takes around 2 hours per panel. I am trying to manage this with the other work which I have to do, which is also increasing. I am also continuing with the KPI work and Bakkavor report which I am understanding more of now. We recently had a visit from M&S who have now approved the format of the report, making writing it much easier. Everyone is getting more stressed now that Christmas is approaching, which is making the atmosphere a little tense, although I am trying not to get involved!

 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.

Now things are starting to get rolling!! My second blog, were should I start? With my awesome nights out or my ever intensifying placement.

OK then nights out, you still got to be a student even though you are still on placement!! Well it was Halloween in the days that have passed, so me and my friends organised a mid-week exploration of the wonderful town that is LEEDS. As you can see from the photo which may have been uploaded now I didn’t have to get dressed up much as that was a day after work, my colleagues do say I look like a zombie early in the morning’s!! Anyway awesome night.

Back to my placement, things going well currently. WELL today I was stuck in traffic for 2 hours coming into work, so not the happiest of moods. As I left you on the last blog I was off to a couple of places, well Sweden unluckily got cancelled last minute. But Wales we got there! Even if it was through a blizzard and with this customer visit I saw more in depth what happens to the shiny metal of which I sell!! This time I saw it been produced into them things that milk cows (Don’t know what they called for all the people that want to know) Interesting!! Then we talked figures and was quite intense but was a great experience one that should help me in my final year, to show that I have real experience in buying and selling situations. One disappointment was the lunch POOR!! The order which I told you about is still going through it’s motions but no doubt the wheels will falter at some stage.

You are now fully briefed, now you have to look forward to this! Well we not doing as much business as I first started, maybe due credit crunch who knows!! This month I have the quarterly briefing to look forward to ( Maybe lunch will be better?) and also I have a couple of customer visits lined up as it is end of the year and prices need discussing!! But main thing is that it is my birthday soon 21st as well so that will needed to be celebrated in style.

Join me again as I make my work up the hierarchy, and soon stainless steel domination!!