Industrial placement Q&A with Shreyas Mottur Venugopal

Nurturing the next generation of engineers is crucial for Magnomatics, which is why we have been offering industrial placements to students at the The University of Sheffield for many, many, years. Design Engineer Undergraduate, Shreyas, has been with us now for a whole year and his Year in Industry placement is coming to an end. He shares his thoughts on his time at Magnomatics.

What interested you in completing your placement at Magnomatics?

I wanted to get some experience seeing what engineering is actually like in industry compared to university and see if it’s something I like to keep doing after I graduate. Not to mention, picking up some new skills and experiences (and little extra cash) for my final year of university was always going to be useful.

What kinds of projects have you been working on? 

All sorts! My manager very kindly made sure I got to try working in as many different types of projects to make the most of my one year. I’ve worked on concept designs for new motors, simulations and analysis, engineering drawings of loads of parts, and designing and building new manufacturing rigs.

What have you learnt during your time at Magnomatics?

For technical skills, I learned quite a lot about engineering drawings and designs, and the many specific features and techniques for making new motors designs. The professional skills, however, stand out a lot more. Working in a busy engineering team, managing my own time and projects, documenting and communicating my tasks — these are things I never thought about in university, but picking them up slowly made me so much more confident in working in these new, challenging engineering projects.

What stands out about your time at Magnomatics?

I think the environment was a big part of my time at Magnomatics. I enjoyed the freedom I had to learn and try new things, and the support from my manager and colleagues any time I ran into a big roadblock. I never felt like I was under pressure to get things perfect or as fast as possible, but rather encouraged to try my best and learn from everything I did.

Would you recommend a placement at Magnomatics to other students?

I would! I quite enjoyed my time working at Magnomatics, and it’s taught me so much more than I ever could’ve expected. The projects were interesting, the team was friendly and supportive and the whole experience is something I could never have had just staying in university.

What are your goals for the future?

In the short term, I want to focus on doing well in my final year and deciding where I want to try working once I graduate. Long term, I think I am going to try focusing on engineering roles and slowly build my career towards an engineering chartership certification, or maybe shift slightly more towards project management — we’ll see where the road goes!