Life After Results Day - Katie's Year in Industry Experience

By Guest Blogger Katie Mawdsley 

As I prepare to start my second year at Imperial College London, studying Chemical Engineering, it is really interesting to reflect on what I learned during my Year in Industry (YINI) placement, and how it helped me succeed in my first year at university. My name is Katie Mawdsley, and I would like to tell you more about my fantastic gap year working at Procter & Gamble.

I first found out about the Year in Industry Scheme during a careers event in my sixth form college, because my teacher told me that I should go and learn more about it because of my interest in STEM – and I am now very glad I did!

My thoughts at the time were that it wouldn’t be for me. I knew what I wanted to study and I knew which university I wanted to aim for, so I felt like my path was quite fixed. And, I didn’t realise people took gap years for any other reason than to travel…

As I listened to the presentation, I realised that some of the companies that worked with EDT, that hire students straight from A-Levels before going to University, were the exact ones I’d want to work for after graduation. So, I started to consider applying for the YINI scheme as a different opportunity that sounded exciting. I decided that I would do so alongside applying to University as I still was not totally convinced that this was the right thing for me. 

One thing led to another and the next thing I knew I had passed an initial screening, a reasoning test and two interviews, and had been offered a position at Procter & Gamble! I accepted the offer straight away without a second’s thought and I have never looked back. I knew that it sounded like a good fit for me and my interests, and that I could gain a huge amount from the experience if it all went well.

At the time though, I did have doubts about what I could achieve during the year. I questioned where I would, like many of my friends thought, just be the person making cups of tea for the important people. How could I ever be of value to a huge company like P&G after only studying A-Level content? How would I know what to do all day, every day? I wouldn’t be given a timetable, or have the structure of a school day to rely on. More than that, I wondered about the future. How would I feel when all my friends had graduated from University and I was a year behind? What if I enjoyed earning so much that I didn’t then want to go to University? (This was my mum’s main concern). What if I forgot everything I learned at A-Levels and struggled when I got to University?

I sat my A-Level exams, had a one-week break, and then moved to Newcastle Upon Tyne to start my placement on 1st July 2015, so I still hadn’t had much time to think about all these questions. I had received a lot of emails from employees at P&G regarding all sorts of admin and one email from my manager-to-be introducing himself and the small team that I was to work in. I considered my reply to this email to be one of my first professional emails that I had to send and so this email, consisting of questions such as what time do I start on my first day, and what do I wear, was a huge milestone in my professional career. 

I am sure that every student studying A-Levels would have very similar worries about leaving school and moving into the world of work. However, what I did not realise in the beginning is that Year in Industry companies and the mentors you will directly work with know this as they take students every year. So they are very experienced and well-prepared to support you to adapt. For me, my mentor was able to make the change to the completely new lifestyle for me as smooth as possible, as they had helped so many other students in previous years as well as being a YINI student himself. He answered all my questions and made me feel comfortable and confident to take on the challenge and gain as much as I could from the experience.

I was lucky enough to talk with a student from the previous year who was nearing the end of her placement and was able to give me lots of advice about how to do well and make the most of the opportunities on offer. It was also really helpful to have lots of other students starting their placement with me (within P&G and at other companies around the North East), and to find that everybody really did have the same questions and worries as I did. This made me feel normal, and much more confident, in a new (and strange) situation and made me believe this was the right thing to be doing.

This process of adjusting to completely new environments and people is an invaluable experience that I have taken forward into my first year at university, and which will continue to be a good foundation for me as I go on in my career. Transitioning from school or college life surrounded by familiar faces to a full-time working schedule with new people in a new place is a daunting prospect, but something we will likely all experience at some point in our lives. For me to have done this so early in my adult life prepared me for similar challenges to come when I moved to London to begin my university studies. I gained a huge amount of confidence, learned to live independently and made lots of amazing friends.

During the initial months of the placement I realised just what a fantastic decision it was to become a part of this. Through the support of my mentor at P&G and mentor from EDT, pastoral members of staff and other students on site, I had settled into my work life and the unfamiliar environment and I quickly became fully engrossed with the project I was assigned to work on. Once I had gotten to grips with the basics through the training and support from the company and my mentors, it became clear that it was my own project and that I would be given a lot of independence. I was excited to learn that I would be managing my own time and priorities with the project and that my opinions and results were respected just like any other member of the team I was working with. 

Over the course of the year working extensively with my mentor, I developed what I feel is my first professional relationship, which is a completely different dynamic to a teacher-student relationship. As I wanted to gain the respect and trust of my mentor, I made sure I managed my time effectively and prioritised to ensure I met all my targets in order to demonstrate that I could be trusted to work independently. He supported me, answered all my questions and was always available to help me when I needed it. I was able to benefit from his experience and to build my confidence through his belief in my abilities. We had set up a weekly meeting on a Monday morning so that I could discuss the previous week’s work, the upcoming week’s work and the content that I would present to our managers later on that day. This meant that I had a lot of independence but I had built a good relationship with him so that if I needed anything, I knew I could go to him. All that the managers want from you is to try your best and work hard- what else can you do? I still keep in touch with my manager now and I hope to do so for a very long time.

Initially, I wondered whether P&G could benefit from my work, given that I was inexperienced and new to everything. One of the most exciting elements of the YINI experience for me was discovering that in fact I could make valuable contributions to this major international company. The work I did during my placement was primarily laboratory-focused, and though I can’t talk about it in detail because of intellectual property agreements I do know that it was part of important and valuable developments that have been taken forward into downstream research and will eventually influence production.

Looking back, I can see that my doubts were misplaced. I gained so much from my placement, and while starting university a year later can seem like a long time, it is actually a really small difference, and you get so much more from that year than you can imagine. It also meant I could go into my A-Levels with less pressure, and make my decision about university with more experience and insight into what I wanted to eventually do.

Highlights of my experience have continued even after the year ended. I attended ChemEngDayUK which is a conference for professional chemical engineers working in industry and academia at which I networked with some familiar faces from the P&G site as well as some others completely unrelated to P&G. However, I believe that my experience at P&G gave me the confidence to network with new professionals and make valuable connections that could help later in my career. During the summer after my first year, I completed an undergraduate research opportunity placement in a laboratory at Imperial with one of the professors from the department. Here, I was able to compare the worlds of industry and academia and so this really highlighted what I enjoyed most with regards to the types of work I was involved in; this has given me invaluable insight and has already started to help me when it comes to deciding the type of career I might want to pursue after my studies.