Graduate Mechanical Engineer, at Costain

The following is a Graduate Review for Costain.

Costain scores 3.6/5 based on 358 reviews.

All reviews are based exclusively on results of feedback from employees from Costain. Employees are asked to rate Costain on a wide range of work place topics, which is broken down through star ratings on the right hand side.

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What are the Best and Worst things about your job?

Best

Challenging work, put in charge of projects straight away, employees and site workers are great to be around and will help you out if you ask - leading to an overall great atmosphere to learn and challenge yourself.

Worst

Hours are longer than other jobs - I was initially put off by comments made on here about the length of the working day (07:30 to 17:30) - but you grow used to it and it does not affect my work life balance at all.

What is the annual salary for this role?

Starting salary: £27,000 - £29,000

Current salary: £27,000 - £29,000

What hours do you actually work, on average?

Start: 07:30

Finish: 17:30

Do you have any interview tips?

3/4 part assessment day:

- assessed group discussion on set out topic with presentation at the end - infront of panel of interviewers
(best advice here is to listen to others and build on their ideas, as well as speaking up to put your ideas out. Make sure to not overpower the discussion or disregard others ideas - always look to build upon and encourage others to share)

- 1 on 1 interview
(standard interview format of both technical aspects and how you would react in various situations - note that on wikipedia Costain did a lot of work in Dubai, Hong Kong etc, however nowadays they are mainly UK based so use relevant and up to date examples not projects from before Costain's downsizing).

- individual presentation on a predetermined subject in front of a panel
(prepare well for this, speak calmly - not a difficult section however others psych themselves out for this part and stumble at the final hurdle - keep calm, be prepared, and they'll ask you a few easy questions at the end).

- technical assessment
(not sure if they still do this but they threw in a question paper to fill the time whilst the group assessors discussed our group presentation - nothing difficult, typical aptitude test numerical questions).