Schlagwort: ‘United Kingdom’
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.
My experiences in Bristol
- Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Computer Engineering (M.Sc.)
- United Kingdom, Bristol
- Infineon Technologies U.K. Ltd.
- March 2022 – August 2022
I lived in Bristol for five months as part of the UNITECH programme. The programme aims to connect engineering students with each other and with companies and to promote the development of soft skills. Part of the programme is a semester abroad at one of the participating universities in Europe and an internship at one of the companies. I decided to do an internship at Infineon Technologies UK Ltd., which at the same time covered the industrial internship I had planned in my Master’s programme.
Through the UNITECH programme, I already had direct contact with Infineon’s HR department, which meant that there was no need for a traditional application process. I wanted to do the internship in a non-German-speaking European country and work on both technical and non-technical tasks. Therefore, a position in the sales area in Bristol was suggested to me, which I accepted after a discussion with my future supervisor.
© Maike van den Berg
I was paid like a graduate student for the internship, which in my eyes was a high salary for an intern by German standards, but not necessarily for young professionals. The funding of the internship as an Erasmus+ internship was especially helpful when applying for a visa.
Because of the Brexit, I needed a visa to be able to work in the UK. The process – as mentioned above – was greatly simplified by the Erasmus funding. I applied for a Tier 5 visa with the help of the RWTH. I had to apply for a Certificate of Sponsorship from the British Council, with the RWTH as the sending institution and the company as the receiving/host institution. With this Certificate of Sponsorship, I was then able to apply for the visa online.
I found a room in a shared house in Bristol through SpareRoom, which is similar to WG Gesucht. Living in Bristol is very expensive and I was lucky to find something affordable close to the city centre. Right at the beginning I bought a British prepaid card (ASDA Mobile) so that I could then open a bank account. It was all done online and I went to Lloyds Bank.
My experience in Bristol can be divided very well into professional and private.
© Maike van den Berg
The internship didn’t really live up to my expectations, partly due to the fact that my supervisor left the company a few weeks after the start of the internship and there was no real replacement, and partly due to the office culture at Infineon in Bristol. Due to the restructuring following the termination of my supervisor, I often lacked a direct contact person and received little feedback on my work despite repeated requests. This was depressing, especially because I had no experience in the sales field and was therefore often somewhat disoriented. However, the internship also included technical projects, which I enjoyed much more and which made me feel more comfortable in the team. In addition, there was little active social life in my office and most of my colleagues were much older than me. Even though I had consistently good experiences in direct contact, no real personal relationships were formed.
These rather disillusioning experiences were more than made up for by everything outside of work! Through my housemates, I had a lot of contact with people my own age locally. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to join any societies at the university because I would have had to be a local student, but I did find a basketball team and made friends through it.
I found Bristol to be a great place to live. It’s a very progressive city with a great arts and culture scene and lots of concerts, some of which are free. There is an almost endless choice of vegan restaurants and many local ciders and beers. The harbour in the city adds to the atmosphere and there are many beautiful parks for warm summer evenings (I was very lucky with the weather during my time there!). Also, the proximity to Wales offers many opportunities for beautiful hikes in the hilly countryside. Unfortunately, the national parks there are not so easy to reach by public transport, so we often rented a car privately via Karshare.
Compared to Germany, the UK is more expensive in all areas. The cost of living was quite high and I found public transport especially expensive.
© Maike van den Berg
That’s why I bought a bicycle right at the beginning, which saved me a lot of expensive bus rides.
I am more than happy that I was able to do the internship in Bristol! The internship itself probably helped me the most in that I now know what is important to me in a future job and how I would (not) like to work. At the same time, of course, the insight into a large company was also interesting, as it gave me the opportunity to work with a wide variety of people at Infineon’s different locations.
Everything aside from the internship was what particularly enriched my time in Bristol. I found the British people I met to be incredibly friendly and open and I felt like I was living in a city where many things are possible.