On the 24th of October, I started my virtual work experience with Jacob’s Engineering. The first thing we did was an introduction to their company and the things that the company did. The first day was really interesting as we gained a small insight into what they did.

I think that work experience is really important because it gives you an idea of what a company does and what sectors they work in. Also, it can give you an idea if you want to work in either that company or in that sector. Furthermore, it is a great thing to put into your CV and employers will see that you have taken the time and effort into putting yourself into the sector of work and getting experience.

After we got a small idea of what they did in Jacob’s, such as nuclear decommissioning, chemical engineering, and aerospace engineering, along with many other forms of engineering, we were told in more depth about the role the played in Jacob’s. I really enjoyed doing the work experience, as we had so many opportunities to find out more about each different sector and we also had the chance to meet new people similar to our age and we could partake in many teambuilding exercises which meant I could work with people I had never met before, much like in proper work environments.

Through each day, from 10 till 3, we learnt more and more about Jacob’s, about the aerospace engineering and how it helps huge companies like NASA and SpaceX design new and innovative technologies to explore space. In civil engineering, we learnt that it isn’t easy to create structures like bridges when there is so much around. For example, we did a teambuilding exercise where we had to work out where the best place to put a bridge into a certain place, and there we many factors included in this, such as an area that easily floods, a wildlife protection area and places that have endangered species. This made the placement of the bridge a lot harder than we had originally thought and it makes the job a lot harder than I thought it would have been.

On Friday, the last day of the work experience, in our groups we had to design and give a presentation on what we learnt, what our favourite part of the experience was and our potential future choices because of this. After we had given the presentation, we got feedback from people that work in Jacob’s. If you are reading this, and you are a child or you have children roughly aged around 14-16, I urge you to research into work experience and find opportunities like these, and they have really helped me decide what I want to do in the future.