Fisher & Paykel has a long history of hiring engineering & science grads & interns, providing them with real-world experience and career development.
#19 of 22 in Mechanical Mechatronic Engineering
I was initially frustrated by having some meaningless work where I was sitting in front of a washing machine for 8 hours a day, but now I have moved teams and projects and now I am looking at rapid response work for things going wrong on our products and it has been much more interesting, as I am looking at part design and how to directly improve products that are going into people homes.
There is substantially less CAD and substantially more time using Excel as everything but a spreadsheet than I expected. I spend a lot of time on the stages of design not generally covered at uni, that being the first stage of trying to figure out what the problem that needs to be solved is and getting the part from a 3D model in Creo Parametric to a real thing being made with the confidence that it isn't going to break.
It's a lot more corporate and working with procurement and quality rather than research and development. Haven't well practiced my engineering skills but learnt a lot of other useful skills and knowledge which can be used across many industries and jobs.
I get full ownership of ~Three projects at a time. This involves defining the problem/ opportunity, Conducting the investigation and finding a solution, and then taking that solution/ product all the way through manufacturing to production.