Sales Performance Analyst Review

My role had busy and not-so-busy days. As my role was very process orientated it was the same job every week on the same day with a few adhoc activities. I enjoyed this as I was able to easily get a grip of my everyday tasks but then able to experience different parts of the business through adhoc tasks.

I felt so valued by my team. That is what I loved so much about IBM. I was so lucky to have a team that included me in meetings and pushed me out of my comfort zone to better myself. My manager was supportive of every decision I made and even helpful when it came to my Uni work. I will miss them when I leave.

I was given a lot of support by management as mentioned above. Both my task manager and my manager gave me enough guidance to be able to do my job efficiently and encouraged me to talk to the wider team and gain experience from others. I have never had such a supportive team who genuinely cared about how well I was doing and my future.

My tasks tended to be weighted towards the end of the week as I worked in operational support in sales. Therefore I had to prepare all the reports for the end of the week ready for the Monday morning. This was a bit annoying having to wait for the data to refresh before I could run my reports but this was the way the company worked and I had to deal with it!

I was given a lot of responsibility at IBM. I ran my own project in my department and had to present to the floor the project I had completed. This is used now by the sales reps and I really felt like I had made a difference to how they worked. Even though I had a lot of responsibility I still had the support from my team and never felt like I had been left alone to do a project.

The skills I have developed are so useful. The amount of stuff you can do on excel that I never realized! The skills I have learned are transferable and will help me in whatever I chose to do in the future. I now have experience in an office and with working with lots of different people. I had to work with people from India, Singapore and Slovakia, this experience you would not get at a small business.

The atmosphere around my team was always fun and friendly however as I was in sales, the rest of the office was very competitive. However, it was always really quiet, not what I imagined a sales floor to be like.... which was a little disappointing. However, it was never horrible or too corporate which is what I liked. Dress down Fridays were always good... plus we had the option of dressing down everyday as we never met clients!

I believe it was well organised. However, it was because of my team and the role they had given me. I have heard of some people not having a great team or their role just didn't have enough for them to do... I think you have to pick carefully if you get far enough into the process for applying. There were set tasks for me to do and I had quarterly meetings with my IBM tutor who was always helpful and gave us guidance on who to talk to if we were interested in applying back. The induction sessions at the start of the year weren't that great.....

I feel the company did invest in me. I think if you do get a placement they would rather keep you if you were any good as you already know how IBM works. There is no guarantee of this though. They ran sessions for us on how to present/communicate effectively and how to create a personal brand. The foundation team had thought about how to develop ourselves whilst on placement.

IBM is very competitive as it is such a good company to work for (Well paid!) I know placements students go through a different stream to outside applicants but it is very hard to get through. They are appealing, the company pays very well and most of the jobs are based in Southbank London. I would like to apply back but as it is so competitive, there is no guarantee of getting through!

Yes, the social scene was so good here. There were about 70 placement students at North Harbour in Portsmouth and 50 of us always went out every weekend. We got on well and had a really good group of us. Everyone knew each other and we all sat at lunch together. The only gripe is that Southbank placement students got their Christmas do paid for and we had to pay for our own as we were a much smaller location!

Portsmouth is cheap to live and to socialize in depending where you go. Some places were more upmarket than others. Living in Southsea in Portsmouth was good as there were lots of shops about. As North Harbour is actually just outside of Portsmouth you had to travel out which took about 20-30 minutes by car. There are trains that run from Portsmouth out to Cosham which are cheap and IBM provide a free shuttle bus from the train station to North Harbour which is a nice touch.

The nightlife was OK... Portsmouth is quite small. There are about 4 clubs - Liquid & Envy, Tiger, Astoria and Lyberry. For a night out Astoria and Lyberry was often the favourite - always busy and cheap drinks! In regards to pubs, Albert Road in Southsea is my favourite. There are so many nice pubs along there that you can sit and have a drink in. Living close to this road was a bonus.

There were some opportunities outside of work such as the mentoring scheme with a Portsmouth university student. This was good to be able to network further. Other than that I have not experienced that much opportunity outside of work. I think it depends on your base location - there are more opportunities in London for example.