Software Sourcing Buyer Review

I really enjoyed my placement year at IBM. I got to learn so many new things over the course of the year through my job role and also by networking with professionals. It also allowed me to develop as an individual and become more responsible.

In my office I felt valued by my colleagues. Some more than others but the reason behind this is because I only had 2 people from my team in the office. Most of my team were based in Bulgaria and Hungary so I never got to have face to face interaction with them. Also, a lot of the people from my office were in senior positions so were very busy.

My manager and my team lead were very supportive and were always willing to provide me with help and guidance, especially when I first started my role. They would send me over presentations / how to documents and screenshots to guide me in any task I was stuck in.

I was very fortunate to have the perfect balance of workload on a daily basis. There was always something for me to do, and if it did get a little quite I could do on the job training and online education which was provided my IBM for it's employees.

During my placement I was given a responsibilities to keep and updates several trackers for different projects I worked on. I would have weekly calls where I would have to meet deadlines and give updates on any progress I had made. As I was a placement student I wasn't given the highest level of responsibilities for obvious reasons but I was given enough for my position.

Placement year has provided me with so many life skills, such as meeting deadlines, working under pressure, being able to network with people of all levels and also helped me develop my communication skills all of which will be very handy during my final year at university and when applying for graduate roles.

The atmosphere in my office was very relaxing and calming. As most the people in my office have worked in IBM for 15 years plus they were like a family and it would be funny listening to their stories and know about how many things in the workplace have changed. We would go on pay day lunch once a month which was also very fun.

IBM has a very good placement scheme for interns know as Foundation. During the course of the year we have opportunities to learn about different grad roles, have lunch and learns via conference calls and also different modules which will help us develop our skills. We also had reviews 3 times during the year where we would set objectives with our managers and then evaluate the progress we had made.

IBM invests a lot into it's interns. As mentioned above they had various different activities their placement students could get involved in to develop their skills via on the job training, or courses they would run and make mandatory for interns. For example I attended the Effective Communication module where we were taught ways to effectively communicate via emails, conference calls and face to face.

IBM had a lot of graduate roles available and they make it really appealing to come back as a graduate. However, their graduates roles are mainly consulting, sales and technical roles so if you do want to go into finance or HR for examples they do not have roles available as a graduate within those sectors.

Personally, I enjoyed the social scenes at the start of my placement year when placement students were getting to know eachother. As I was based away from home during placement year in Portsmouth which is a small city I started getting a little tired from going to the same places.

The cost of living was standard. With the pay I got I was able to handle living / going out costs without running short of money

The nightlife was good depending what sort of music you are into. As stated above I did do placement in a small city so I did end up getting tired from going to the same places.

Yes, IBM encouraged us interns to participate in Giveback which is a way to give back to IBM and develop ourselves. For example, attending universities for careers fair or helping out a local charity.