MicksGarage.com, from a Transition Year Students Perspective.

This week we had the pleasure to have Arron Talt in with us to on a week long work experience placement. He decided to write up a short blog on what his experience was like, and it's well worth the read:

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A TYs experience of MicksGarage.

Hi I’m Aaron, A TY student from Cross and Passion College, Kilcullen, I have spent the past week doing work experience in MicksGarage. It’s been an interesting week to say the least.  What were my expectations of what MicksGarage? To be honest I wasn't expecting much, a few ways of doing work in an office and a day or two in the warehouse and then DONE. Work experience over. But this is not what I got, I received a week full of new things to do each day from analysing pieces of data, to learning a how to code a database. It was truly a fully-fledged weeks work experience  where I actually gained, well, experience. I know that sounds really overly happy with my experience but I did enjoy it and really couldn't fault it other than the early morning hours which were a bit of a killer, up at twenty to seven each morning for a sixteen year old that’s a real challenge.

The week started off with me getting a shown around the facilities at MicksGarage and shown to a desk where I would be working for the majority of the week, it sounds sad but in my head I was thinking “yes  my own desk, I feel so important”. After this I was  set to work, I was analysing data for most of the first few days along with some research, really I just did what I was told to do, my work ethic was just nod and say no matter what the task.

The real fun started on Thursday when I was given the opportunity to shadow some of the employees of MicksGarage and see what their work involves. Firstly I was with their database coder Paco. which I was bit nervous about because I knew absolutely nothing about databases or coding. But by the end of my time shadowing him I had not just a basic knowledge of database coding but also a genuine interest in it. Thanks Paco!

Then I moved on and shadowed Rob who puts together the images on the website and also creates there emails. This was a surprising experience as I learned how much effort goes into something as simple as a picture on their website; it gave me a new perspective on how tiny details can affect something so greatly. I also gained a new respect for people who use Photoshop as it a painstaking process, I guess it’s a labour of love like most of the jobs in MicksGarage, Some of them were long processes but people didn’t really mind going through them as long as they would benefit the company.

My final stop was the warehouse; I would describe it as busy and cold. But mostly busy. Chris showed me around told me what goes on in this place. The lads in the warehouse were constantly on the move, be it gathering together orders, packaging them or preparing them for postage.  I was shown were all the orders from upstairs are put together, I got the opportunity to see the complete process which is something that I found interesting.

I'm now on my final day at MicksGarage and I am going to miss it, alright maybe not the early mornings or evening traffic but everything else I really did enjoy. MicksGarage is well run, the employees are reasonably relaxed but at the same time work hard. To sum up my week I would say it was definitely one of the most enjoyable TY experiences I’ve had this year and thanks to everyone at MicksGarage for all their time and help.

Aaron.