Graduate Systems Engineer Review

The graduate scheme for me has been a great opportunity to get launched straight into a role within the company. Unfortunately as the scheme does not have rotational placements and some areas of the company are very siloed it can be more difficult to get stretch experiences and exposure to the whole company. While I am really well supported by my team and colleagues in learning in the role, there does seem to be less formal training and learning than I was expecting.
Overall I have gone through patches of really enjoying my role when the going is busy and new opportunities arise however there can be times were it stagnates.

My main responsibilities for my role are to support the documentation and requirements formal testing to the customer for the system that I work on. I often work with software and hardware teams to resolve bugs or obsolescence issues found during product lifecycle or testing.

I am very valued by the team and contribute meaningfully however due to processes within the team reviews of documents take much longer than expected and so it can feel my work is undervalued. This is due to having less resources than sometimes required.

Yes my perks and benefits fairly remunerate myself however most perks are only available to select once a year. When comparing to other companies there may be fewer benefits.

This role is preparing for me to role off into my current job but due to the lack of formal training I will be leaving the graduate scheme with no further qualifications or greater knowledge of systems other than the work I have done within my role. Therefore if I moved to a more technical role, to a different system or company it could feel like starting again.

The support from my team has been excellent and they are always open to questions.
I did receive a buddy at the start of my scheme however that was not well maintained and I no longer have contact with them as they left the company a few months into my role.
I have contacted the early careers team a few times however in order to get a response you really need to talk to them in person and that relies on your being at the same site.

My typical working week has been excellent for my work/life balance due to hybrid working and flexi-time.

It is very inclusive in terms of what I have seen although there could be better networking and inter-business unit events.

Yes

I would recommend certain business units and the apprenticeship scheme. My non-rotational graduate scheme has not been as much of a learning opportunity as I had hoped.

I expected it to have more formal training or better support from early careers to really develop and retain their graduates.