During my studies, I was introduced to Parker when the local site partnered with my university to offer placement years for Engineering students. I was fortunate to be invited for an interview. When asked about my experience, I spoke about hydraulics and pneumatics, as these were prominently featured on Parker’s website. However, I was unaware that the location where I was interviewing specialized in Filtration, an area unrelated to what I had discussed. Fortunately, I was still offered a placement. It was during this placement I was able to gain exposure to the wide range of industries in which Parker operates. I have always been eager to continue learning, so a graduate scheme that includes multiple placements across different operating groups and roles seemed ideal. Parker felt like the perfect place to expand my knowledge in ways that cannot be taught in a classroom.
For me the 4 placement format is the best thing about the programme. These placements give me the freedom to explore new and different roles. This is quite important to me as being at the beginning of my career I don’t know what jobs are out there and what I’d find fulfilling as a career. As well as the career support it provides it’s also a great opportunity to build up a picture of how different functions and roles operate and interact with each other within the company. In the Programme we also change locations, one of which is outside of our country of origin. Not only does this allow us to explore different industries, product lines and manufacturing technologies but it allows us to explore different cities, working cultures and countries. To me this emphasises how the programme doesn’t just build us up professionally but personally too.
I started as a Process Engineer in the Manufacturing Engineering team at the Polymer Seals Division in Loughborough, it was a great opportunity which allowed me to experience management on change on shop floor, improve my communication skills and gain an understanding in Polymer Seal manufacturing. Around halfway through this placement I pivoted to the Applied Research and Technology (AR&T) team to support automation implementation on shop floor including the deployment of bespoke digital work instruction software. Following this placement, I moved to the Instrumentation Products Division in Barnstaple to support the Lean Team. In this placement I have been tasked with driving site-wide improvements on HPT utilisation and 5S auditing as well as creating localised training courses on Lean topics. In addition to my long-term projects, I have been given great opportunities to participate in a wide range of events including Kaizen, Value Stream Mapping and 2P. These events have been the perfect opportunity to learn Lean through the application of the tools.
My most memorable moment of the Graduate Scheme would be our Community Meeting in Corsico. Since the Graduate Scheme is EMEA wide there is a tightknit Graduate community across all of Europe where we often have training calls together, functional catchups, country catchups and more however, they are mostly online. The event in Corsico was the first time all the first and second year graduates got together in person to share projects, explore topics of growth culture and celebrate the second years completing the graduate scheme. This moment has really stuck with me as even though many of the connections were made online and relatively recently everyone got along as if we’d known each other for years.