James MacGregor

Country of origin: United Kingdom

Placement: Airbus

I chose to take a placement year because I wanted to have vital experience of working at a global company before leaving university, I was also very determined to secure a placement in an industry that I was particularly interested in.  I thought the experience would help me build a professional working manner which would help with future job interviews and future job performance in addition I wanted to gain valuable industry knowledge and build a strong relationship with an important department in a large company.

My job role was as the Internal Communications and Community Engagement Officer for Airbus. In the internal communication role I assisted with communications for the UK sites Broughton and Filton where I delivered corporate and UK messages to more than 10,000 employees daily and helped to deliver corporate messages to senior management and shop floor employees. The community engagement position was to provide contact with the local community of Flintshire and Cheshire to build relations and present the company in a favourable image by designing and organising various PR events.

My responsibilities grew with every month, after a few months I had the full trust of my manager to organise events and present my work to senior managers. The communications department is the only department where interns on placement can experience all aspects of the company and interact with the senior managers.

The favourite part of my placement year was interacting with the local community and working on communications projects for Broughton plant assigned to me by the head of communications and head of Broughton plant. These projects allowed me to visit companies such as Rolls Royce, Cadbury, JCB and Jaguar Land Rover.  I enjoyed regularly assisting with factory tours and developing my engineering knowledge, I am fascinated my aircraft and to see wings being produced every day was a great experience.

I established myself as a reliable employee on placement when my boss/colleague was made redundant. I took over her role as manager as well as my existing Internal Communications/Community Engagement Role and it was noted that I could handle the extra pressure and increased work responsibilities. This change made me much more organised and changed the way I approached a tasks and will be something I continues to do indefinitely.

When I complete my placement I will apply for the Airbus graduate scheme in Lean Production and Quality Management. Although this is a different area to what my placement was in, I worked closely with the graduate who held this position and introduced myself to the head of department and invited him to an event I organised to show him my work.