Article to be supplied .....

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean.

A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.

Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar.

The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn't listen. She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then

Over the past few years, Lucy Electric has engaged in a number of initiatives to attract and retain "younger "Lucy employees.

Apprenticeships

In the Oxford days, Lucy ran large and prestigious apprenticeship schemes; providing us with a pipeline of well-trained engineers and technicians. Unfortunately, this scheme stopped by the time we moved to the Thame site in 2007.

In 2010, Paul Hollington led and re-introduced the Apprentice Scheme, which resulted in the recruitment of three apprentices; Dexter, Jack and Jordan. All three have just successfully completed their 4 year apprenticeship and we would like to congratulate them on this achievement. They have been offered permanent positions with us, which we hope will give them exciting careers with Lucy Switchgear for many years to come.

Following on from this success, a second cohort of four apprentices started last September ; Jade, Jake, Jamie and Josh. Having completed two terms at Abingdon College, they are now back at Thame, working on projects and gaining practical knowledge to support their academic learning. We wish them a long and successful career with us.

Industrial placements and Internships

In 2012, we offered a one year placement opportunity in our Engineering department to Jacqui Stiefel from Sheffield University, who spent a very successful year with us, working on a materials cost reduction project for Sabre tanks. Jacqui returned to University part-time in September 2013 to complete her Masters in Mechanical Engineering, whilst still working on her project in Engineering. She completed her masters in June with a well-deserved 2:1 and was nominated for a Student Award for providing support to other students.

Jacqui is now travelling in Europe and will return in August to take up a position as Design Engineer in the New Product Development team.

Following the success of Jacqui's placement year, in July 2013 we offered placements to two Brunel University students ; Archie and Sunil. They have now finished their placements and will return to Brunel in September to complete their degrees, hopefully taking with them practical design skills acquired from working with us. We also have two new placement students from Bath, Linh and Sam, who will be starting in August. We hope that they too will have an interesting and fulfilling placement year at Lucy Electric.

During July, Chris Stallwood, a 2nd Year Product Design and Manufacturing Student from Nottingham University has also been working as an Intern on a very useful project, which involves logging and recording Test Reports.

Work Experience and Shadowing

For a second year running, Lucy Electric has hosted work experience students from the Lord William's School in Thame. This has enabled the Year 10 students to get an insight into the world of work and how a commercial organisation operates.

This year students from the JCB Academy and Cherwell School have participated in work experience here at Lucy Switchgear, this included a female student from Surbiton High School who was interested in exploring the opportunities for women in engineering.

Links with Lord William's School: Thame

Following the success of our work experience programme, we were invited by Lord William's school to attend their Future Fest careers event for year 12's in the spring. Lucy Electric's HR Manager Caroline Jones took part in the event, offering students advice and mentoring on interview etiquette. In June, Mike Jones from our Design Engineering Team and also an "Old Boy" of the School, delivered a presentation to Year 10 students on work experience.

Graduate and other training opportunities

The Sales team have recently recruited Tom Farmery and Chris Jones to their team, who are currently undergoing an intensive 6 month training programme. This will enable them to join our experienced sales team, focusing on developing customers in the Industrial markets.

We are now looking to recruit recent graduates to train for roles in the Design Engineering, Operations and Technical Departments.