INTERN STORIES | OMAR DILERY internship with Clean Energy Pipeline
Omar completed an engineering internship with Clean Energy Pipeline as part of his Petroleum and Chemical Engineering degree at the University of Surrey.
Hear about his internship experience.
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Video transcription
Tell us about your internship experience
I studied chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Surrey, and when I was coming out of the course, I realised that my prospects were looking a bit bleak. Especially with the current (job) climate especially here in the UK, when it comes to graduates getting jobs. I quite quickly realised that I need to find a way to gain some sort of experience within engineering or sustainability, because that's the field I wanted to get into. (At that time) I didn’t have much luck, since it was very competitive.
I didn't know what InternMatch was. I didn't realise that it was one of those legacy internships where you're gonna go straight away. One of the things I liked about it was that there was such a variety of different jobs to choose from.
The internship was with a sustainable energy news and data company called Clean Energy Pipeline. It is a company which deals with everything related to sustainability. It is mostly worldwide. But for my internship I was focused mainly on the UK. Data analysis was essentially my day to day role.
I managed to gain quite a strong fundamental understanding of how projects are undertaken in the UK with regards to sustainability and renewable energy as well. (Understanding) the bigger players. How they go from the conception of an idea to execution (and) the trends that are going on in the renewable energy market in the UK. All of these were very important lessons that I didn't come across during my university experience.
What was it like joining a new business?
The program leader, the person running the internship, was a guy called Chen at Clean Energy Pipeline. (He was) a very knowledgeable guy, who really knows his stuff and he was always happy to help me. At the beginning he really walked me through everything, I was always on call with him. He was teaching me as much as he could about the industry and (with) the very limited time that we had, he would give me tasks which didn't keep me (stagnant). (He) included me as part of the business. I felt quite included and I was given quite a lot of responsibility after becoming familiar with the basics of what Clean Energy Pipeline does.
A day in the life of your internship
The day to day tasks were actually analysing pieces of information from government databases, extracting the useful information and uploading it onto Clean Energy Pipeline’s databases. While a lot of it was internal (in the beginning), I was later given the opportunity to work externally. So, instead of going to Chen, explaining and showing him my analysis after analysing the information, I would actually go to the Clean Energy Pipeline database, which is used by customers and upload the information into a format which could be understood by a layman customer. So I gained another useful skill.
What are your key takeaways from your internship?
I was working with multiple people. This time it wasn't just (a) lecturer who was gonna mark your work, this was work that was going out to customer databases and things. So you are under a lot more pressure. (And) as they say, pressure makes diamonds.
I managed to learn. (And) I would say I really honed my team working skills, understanding people's limitations, the team's limitations, but also understanding the strength and delegating tasks. I observed the senior ranking people within the company and asked them how they delegated their tasks which I apply in my own job.
How was your internship different to studying?
It's important to realise that in university it is all theoretical (knowledge). You never get a chance to actually see how it's actually applied in the real world. Just because it's theoretically possible, is it possible practically? Sometimes that's not always the case. Financial, business, political, geopolitical aspects also influence all these situations, which was a very useful addition to my skill set.
What impact has your internship had on your career?
There was a very crucial part of me getting my graduate job because before (getting) the internship, one of the responses I would receive after getting rejected (would be), there are people who have more experience than you, or they have more professional experience than you.
But with regards to the internship, when they looked at my CV, they would ask me quite often. They really want to know that. And I don't think I realised the importance of getting some kind of professional experience when I was applying for my job.
They were not always interested in my technical skills, but they really wanted to know about my soft skills, which I think one is one of the most important things of doing an internship or having any kind of professional experience.