Ryan McLaughlin - Technical Graduate, Corporate Affairs
The graduate scheme is an 18 month programme divided into three six-month placements. Two of them will be within a tagged directorate that you are going to work with when you finish and one will be a broadening experience. So for me, I'm in the corporate section doing something completely different from engineering. Throughout the 18 months you have a variety of training - both soft skills and technical skills - and the engineers focus quite a lot on the technical skills of transmission and distribution.
Compared to some other graduate schemes I think the National Grid graduate scheme gives me a really wide breadth of fields to explore. Many other schemes give you really good skills for one core area but the skills I've learnt, the soft skills in particular, are very transferable and I've used them both in the electrical world where I started and in the corporate world, where I'm working now.
The best thing about the National Grid working environment is the company ethics, we are really involved in volunteering and doing things above and beyond your day job, this means that whenever you get up and go to work you actually really enjoy it because it's not just about doing the job, it's about giving something back to the community as well
You know when you do a good job because you get 360 degree feedback from your manager, there's always time to talk and ask questions and get feedback. But one of the best things about working here is that you don't just get negative feedback, there's positive reinforcement. When you do things you find out if you've done a good job and that really spurs you on to do more things.