What were your expectations about your internship before you joined?
The internship was not initially meant to be one. I applied for a role as a production engineer at Xero Linear Lighting Systems, and during the interview, told them I was looking to complete an internship. We agreed to consider this role an internship, although the work duties did not majorly change based off the original job description.
What was the reality? How was it different from your expectations?
The place I worked at made architectural lighting installations. There was a team of 4 engineers who worked upstairs (along with other managing people), and downstairs was a factory for producing these installations. For the first 3 months, I worked as production assistant in the factory completing repetitive manual labour duties. This included filing, deburring, assembling, sanding, bending sheet metal, and a small amount of time shadowing the CNC operator. The intention behind this first placement was to gain valuable hands-on experience, in order to better perform the duties of an engineer upstairs. My expectation was to move on quickly to perform the duties advertised, such as drafting, CAD work, engineering documentation, and process improvement; but unfortunately, management got comfortable having me work downstairs, despite me advocating for myself. After much deliberation, I was finally moved upstairs, where I worked for 2 months, until I was asked to take a week off due to low sales, then ghosted by my manager. Luckily I had already completed my required hours for the internship, and was just continuing work there beyond the internship at this stage. It was an unfortunate end to my first placement in industry.
What lessons were the most important from your internship? Why were they important?
The most valuable lessons came from the short time I had upstairs working with the engineers. They were helpful and easy to get along with. There was occasional dedicated learning time where one engineer would teach the others useful skills to do with creating files for the CNC machine with Creo Parametric. The lead engineer of my department was very helpful, and put a lot of effort into making sure I understood the work and giving me feedback. This was the most positive part of the experience. I also learned that you must stick up for yourself in the workplace. Although I did do that, I think I could have set higher expectations with my boss sooner, to avoid extended amounts of time performing repetitive duties.
After your workplace experience, what would you say your value proposition would be to an employer? How can you demonstrate this?
During my time upstairs in my internship, I noticed countless inefficiencies and bad processes causing errors in the creation of engineering documentation, such as drawings and BOMs. I used my Python scripting experience to automate repetitive parts of the job that are more suited to a computer. To this day, the department is still using these Python scripts. My value proposition to a future employer is that I am always looking to improve things.
How did your internship influence the type of role in which you are interested?
My internship taught me one very valuable lesson, and it is to be more critical of the workplace before settling in. In this regard, I would probably avoid working at a similar company in the future. In regards to the engineering work specifically, I quite enjoyed creating the drawings, and found I was easily able to do 8 hour shifts at a desk doing engineering work, but doing repetitive manual labour is definitely not for me.