Schlagwort: ‘bachelor’
Internship at Mercedes Formula One Team in the UK
- Business Administration and Engineering: Mechanical Engineering B.Sc.
- United Kingdom, Brackley
- Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
- 07/2023 – 07/2024
Application/Finding an internship
The application process for the internship was quite lengthy and kicked off around September 2022 for a start in July 2023. In England, it is very common for students to include a year in industry in their studies, so you will find many available internships across various fields. The duration is usually one year because this is the standard period for university students unless it is a pure summer internship. Ultimately, the internship duration will depend on which internship you apply for and what is offered by the companies you are applying to. If it is a bigger, international company, it is very likely that they will help you a lot with the application process for a visa and put you on a company insurance scheme. This can differ significantly between companies. Following people from that company on LinkedIn can help you if internship positions become available as they are often shared there too.
Accomodation & Living expenses
While grocery prices are in a similar range as German grocery prices, the costs for housing and running costs such as electricity, gas, and water will be significantly higher in the UK. For me, they came out at around £80/month per person in a shared house with two other people, which is very high. Rent was over £500/month per person too, which is around what you can expect in this area and is comparable to what other interns living in or near Brackley had to pay as well. Still, this comes as quite a shock when moving to the English countryside from a German university city. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served in the company restaurant, and I usually ate lunch and dinner there for £2.80 per meal. The food was delicious, and the menu changes every week to offer great variety.
As Brackley is a small town, you will have to work through the local letting agencies’ websites, but there is a good network of incoming and leaving interns that provides opportunities to easily take over apartments, which I highly recommend. This also alleviates the pressure to buy furniture as the places either come furnished or you will be able to buy furniture off your predecessors at a low price. To be able to rent an apartment, you will need a valid visa. Many letting agencies will be understanding of these circumstances and offer to wait for your visa approval. After the visa gets confirmed, you can then take the next steps to set up a UK bank account, for which I recommend Revolut. Also, with a registered address, you will be able to apply for an NI (National Insurance) number, which is crucial for the company to pay you a salary.
Everyday life/ the internship
© Nicolas Musiol
Apart from the amazing work atmosphere and interesting projects that the team entrusted me with, you will work alongside a young team and will join the company with a group of around 40 interns/industrial placements (short IPs). Working on projects together, enjoying lunches and dinners in the Hub (the company restaurant), quickly formed a big group of close friends. You’ll find yourself very quickly going to the local pubs or to parties in Banbury or Oxford together. Out of the 40 IPs, there is always a good mix of internationals with Brits. My year had people from Australia, the US, Canada, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Ireland, and England, which made for a very interesting mix of people.
Many other sports clubs give you the opportunity to mingle with locals, as Mercedes has its own cycling club, a football team, and many sports courses. Outside of the company, you will find a tennis club, a rugby club, and a leisure centre with a pool, so there are plenty of activities for you to do in your free time. I would also highly recommend volunteering at the local football club. Every Wednesday around lunchtime, they organize a lunch for the elderly and disabled at the clubhouse, and they are always looking for a helping hand. They have lovely stories to tell, and you will find that many of them can give you great recommendations as they know the area inside out.
Free time/tips
Weekend trips with my newly found friends took me to Liverpool, Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, and on a ski trip to the French Alps, and many smaller adventures. A fantastic weekend activity is trying to complete all the local parkruns, which is a local run event held every Saturday at 9 am over a distance of 5 km. You can put all your running experience to the test by competing in the annual Silverstone Race in May, where you lap the race circuit two times for a race distance of 10 km. Great views along the way and thousands of participating runners make it a great event.
© Nicolas Musiol
Being located close to Banbury, which has a train station with a direct connection to Birmingham and London, one can hop on a bus to the neighbouring towns and villages to explore those or use them as a transit possibility to explore the country. A day trip or weekend trip to London is always great fun, and I’ve been many times now, as I’ve come to love London for the many different boroughs like Shoreditch, Camden, Kensington, Chelsea, and more. Each of them has a unique vibe, cool cafes, shops, restaurants, and pubs which are worth exploring.
Around Brackley, there are two airfields, both within walking distance. They make for a nice jog around them while small sports planes take off over your head or land on the small runways. For the daring, they even offer tandem parachuting. You can also visit the many golf clubs around and test your swing on the driving range. You only have to pay for balls as they will give you clubs to practice with if you don’t have any.
There are nice cafes all around Brackley as well, my personal favourites being The Old Fire Station in Brackley or the Post Office Café in Evenley. I can also recommend taking the bus to Oxford and visiting museums there, going punting on the canals, or visiting the local colleges.
There is also Stowe School in Buckingham only a few minutes away if you have a bicycle. The Stowe estate has a scenic park with many beautiful temples and arches. It makes for a nice afternoon stroll, especially on nice summer evenings.
Conclusion
All in all, I can only recommend committing to an international internship and immersing oneself in a foreign environment. Even though a full year exceeds the mandatory internship requirements of the RWTH, I can assure everyone it is an amazing experience, and I would do it again without a shadow of a doubt. I’ve greatly benefited from this year in the UK, not only professionally by working my dream job in F1 but also personally by meeting a lot of amazing people.
Go abroad. Go to Sweden.
- Business Administration and Engineering: Materials and Process Engineering B.Sc.
- Sweden, Helsingborg
- RKW Sweden AB
- April – October 2022
Ah, what a great summer…looking back now, it feels more like a big vacation than a semester of working. Maybe because I did so many great after- work activities, maybe because my internship itself was nice or maybe because now this time is over and it is winter in Germany. 🙂
I arrived in the middle of April and at first, things started off medium well. My room, rented by the company, was in the basement of a villa with quite a few alcoholics in the building. They were all nice to me, but this was something new and scary to me. Over time and with changing apartment mates it got better, but the first months were a bit hard because I did not feel at home there. Here we already have a few learnings about Sweden; first, almost nobody in Sweden rents apartments, so rental websites are a bit weird and mostly people in unstable points of their lives or students rent apartments. Also, Sweden has super strict laws and crazy prizes when it comes to alcohol, you are for example not allowed to drink alcohol on the street.
Let’s get to a more fun topic, work 😉 For me, working at a Swedish location of a German company was great. The atmosphere was good, the people were really nice and everyone spoke English well. Another great thing about Sweden is, how far it is in all terms of equality. If I was a woman or a man, the site management or the little intern, I felt like everyone was equally important and valuable. This is not the case in all companies or countries and so it was very interesting to have the many times stressed and not so relaxed German part of the company in comparison to the Swedish part I was working at.
If you want to experience a great working atmosphere, try working in Sweden. 🙂
One thing about the chill atmosphere, which almost irritated me, was the amount of Fika (coffee breaks) they take. Sometimes 45 minutes per day made me feel a bit unproductive, but many of my colleagues there were very comfortable with that. Another thing I had heard about before, is the swedes awkwardness when it comes to small talk. My own experience was, that if you have any connection to the person, small talk is fine and they will be really nice. They won’t go out of their way for you, like speak English during the entire lunch because you don’t speak Swedish, but someone will try to integrate you a bit. If they don’t know you at all, they will try not to talk to you at all, in public for example.
I did have a bit of problems in the beginning to get involved socially, but through my hobby sailing, some colleagues and Facebook, things slowly picked up. Facebook is actually one of my biggest recommendations for anyone going to Sweden. If you are trying to rent an apartment, inform yourself on clubs or social groups. If you want to find friends, look there. What works really well is hiking groups. I found that the people there are usually very open, come from everywhere and on top of that you are exploring the area. What happened to me is that one girl saw one of my hiking plans in one group, texted me and we became friends. We even made a trip to Stockholm together in the last weeks of my time in Sweden!
Now let’s come to my specific Skåne recommendations:
© Kuhlmann, Selma
-Kallbadhusets, beautiful saunas at the sea, where you can switch between bathing in the cold sea and sitting in the sauna. Very relaxing and not very expensive. (about the price for a cup of beer in Sweden;))
-Venn island in the middle of the Öresund, a beautiful place with fun yellow tandem bikes for exploring the nature.
-Kullaberg. An awesome hiking spot northern of Helsingborg.
-The bakery två systras in Helsingbog. They have a lot of awesome traditional Swedish Fikabröd like Kardemummabullar or Vaniljhjärta. My personal cake favorite: the Budapest.
-The Vasa museum in Stockholm. We were also a bit unsure of going because it does cost some money, but it was all worth it. Such an interesting and greatly made museum!
My conclusion: Go abroad. Go to Sweden. Start somewhere new. Learn more about yourself.