Why is Jeremy considering a student work placement?

M: Hi Helen. Can you spare a few minutes?
W: Hello Jeremy, no problem.
M: I just wanted to talk to you about temporary work placements...I’ve never really thought there was a good reason for doing one. I’ve got some savings, so I don’t really need the money at the moment. But I’ve had an email from the university about a vacancy that looks quite interesting. You did a placement last year, didn’t you?
W: I did, yes. In my case, I wanted to find out if I was making the right career choice before I began applying for permanent jobs. I thought I wanted to work in car manufacturing but I wasn’t sure. So I applied to Toyota.
M: What was the application process like?
W: Lengthy. There were a lot of different parts to it. The dullest one was a psychometric test-you know, when you have to answer loads of questions about yourself.
M: And you’re trying to guess what’s the best thing to say!
W: Yes. Then there was an activity that we did in groups, which I found really fascinating. Engineers are renowned for being a bit unsociable, but I thought we made a great team. And we had an individual task too. We had to sort through various business documents and prioritise them. It was just like what you have to do as a student really, just with different content.
M: What exactly were you doing on the placement?
W: I was helping to design some diagnostic software to identify any waste in the car assembly process.
M: Do you mean the waste of materials?
W: No, time. Anything that can speed the process up helps to cut costs.
M: How did the work placement compare to being a student? Was it hard work?
W: Yes, it was. I’d had full-time work before -I’ve done various unskilled jobs during university holidays, and some of those involved long hours-so I thought I’d find it easy. I was wrong though. I think when you’re on placement you’re always trying to prove yourself...
M: So you push yourself hard to succeed?
W: Yes. But I got a lot of support from my employers. They were always helpful. And then at the end of the placement I was given formal feedback.
M: Do you mean on your engineering ability?
W: Well, no, I didn’t really need that because we had team meetings every other day, and so I had the chance to discuss technical issues and ask about anything that wasn’t clear.  The evaluation was about general workplace things, like organisational ability, initiative... That sort of thing...
M: I get the impression you think you benefited from the placement...?
W: Well the best thing is that they’ve offered me a job for next year! Depending on my exam results of course, but still...
M: A permanent one?
W: Yes! But apart from that I learned so much. The industrial environment was much more demanding than the academic one, so my general skills improved. Like time management... meeting deadlines...And on the technical side I learned new software packages like MS Project.