Does anyone know of work experience placements for engineering?

Question

I will be going into Year 10 and have to do work experience in April/May. I would love to become an engineer as I love Maths and I can travel in the West of England, Coventry or London.

Please let me know if you know of any companies that offer placements. Thankyou

Answer 1

Ask around.

In Year 12, I decided that I'd better do some work experience to see if I was making the right decision by choosing to study Engineering at uni. When I spoke to people who were vaguely interested in my future (you know, just asking what I was planning on doing and that sort of stuff), I just told them that I wanted to read engineering. I spoke to my dentist, doctor, eye person, teacher and just whoever wanted to know. It turned out that quite a lot of people knew others who were engineers and they'll tell you about them if you tell them that you want to become an engineer. If you ask nicely, they might be willing to ask for you if you can do some work experience or give you some contact details. If you don't know enough people, go out and volunteer or something to meet people. My school forced us to do "outside service" which meant that we had volunteer or do something useful. I volunteered and spoke to the volunteer coordinator who turned out to be a Cambridge graduate and I managed to get contact details and then finally a week of work experience.

The company I worked for was called Ramboll Whitbybird. A section on their website tells you what to do if you are looking for work experience. Try that. Lots of other engineering companies will probably have similar sections in their websites so look up some companies and check out their websites.

If you can't be bothered looking through a list of engineering companies, lots of companies also have their names printed on vans. Take a note of the name of the company and look it up later. This means you only have to look up one company at a time.

If you are terrible at meeting people or don't have time to get out very often, try Yellow pages. Pick out companies which are close where you live and email, phone or write to them asking for work experience. With this method, it takes longer and you'll probably have to write to several companies. It also helps if you show the company that you know a little about them - so do some background research before you ask for any work experience.

Personally, I think the best way is to go out and meet people.

**** luck.