Executive Assistant Review

I applied to do a Marketing role, and my contract offered a Marketing Placement, however I was given a PMO type role. By the time I started at IBM my role had been offshored and I was left with very little/nothing to do. I was lucky enough to fall into an Executive Assistant role with a fantastic manager, and although I learnt a lot, it was not what I wanted to do in my placement and still, a year on, I am unsure of what I want to pursue when I graduate.

At the beginning of my placement when I considered leaving, it was my immediate team that made me feel valued and encouraged me to stay. I can't say much for the wider IBM, I felt very left down by them, and just like another cog in their machine. I worked within a small team and became close to many of them, being separated from the placement community, I was very lucky to be surrounded by such fantastic people.

I feel very lucky to have the manager that I do. She is inspirational, supportive, fair, encouraging and authentic. She likes things done right which meant, to begin with, she was reluctant to relinquish tasks. However, she saw my potential and she believed in me, even when I didn't. She pushed me to be better and expected a lot of me, that I was driven to meet and exceed. She would sit down for 15, 30 or even 60 mins to talk to me about whatever I wanted to learn about and would always make time for me. Being such a great manager meant she got pulled across projects all over the country, so I wasn't able to be around her as much towards the end of my placement, but she was only ever a phone call away.

This varied every day. Unlike most IBM Placement roles, I didn't have regular weekly and monthly tasks, they were almost always ad-hoc. This meant that one day I would have the bare minimum to do and would have to ask around for jobs or focus on my individual learning, and other days I would hardly have time to take a breath!

I was given a lot of responsibility from the get go in my role as Executive Assistant, and increasingly more as I proved myself. I was always keen to say yes to whatever was asked of me, and whether I completed the task by myself, or with help from my colleagues, I would always get it done. I always strived to meet and exceed peoples ever growing expectations of me, which meant I earned the respect from my peers. The problem with being given responsibility or authority at a young and inexperienced age, is getting people to respect you before you have proven yourself, some people just won't listen, and it takes the occasional copy in of a senior manager for them to do as you ask!!

I have learnt many management and people skills, as well as seen how a project works, end to end. I have witnessed what a large company is really like and what it is actually like in the workplace. I have also learnt a lot about myself and how I work best. These are all skills for life, the reason I only put 6 out of 10 was because these weren't the skills I necessarily wanted to gain from my placement. Wanting to do a Marketing placement and coming out with Business skills wasn't a waste of time at all, it's just not what I wanted to learn about.

The building I was based in was in a small town. We were told on my induction day that the building was actually closing down the following year (towards the end of my placement) and so that we shouldn't really be affected, but it meant the building was so quiet and slowly over time just got more and more dead. It was quite demoralising to try and work in, and meant that there wasn't much to do besides your actual work day. I also worked with some people that quite negative which was also often brought the atmosphere down.

I believe I was a bit of an anomaly in the fact that when I arrived on my induction, no one was sure of who I was supposed to meet at my base location on Monday. Long story short the woman that hired me had left and hadn't really passed the information on. The interview, offer and induction stages were done very well and made you feel welcome, however I felt if you weren't based in South Bank, North Harbour or Hursley (the big locations), you weren't supported as much. I also had to obtain additional clearance which I did feel supported through; the experience was ruined for me when I felt unwanted or not cared about on my first day at work

Apprentices are sent on many courses to assist with their developments, but as placement students are only working for a year, I felt much less cared about. IBM didn't seem invested in us as much as apprentices, which I can understand, but we are still there to learn and develop. The placement community offered a few 'Employability workshops' that I feel were not as described, and not very informative, and didn't help with my employability skills at all. People within my immediate team however always took time and effort to teach me what I wanted to learn at each stage of a project, from the beginning planning to testing and releasing a final product. If you ever asked someone to sit down with you for a few minutes and teach you about what they do, they will!

The Business offers many Graduate roles, claiming to provide more responsibility etc, however none of which appealed to me. IBM seems to be struggling and aren't employing the numbers they once were. IBM is such a big business, it is hard for them to show individual employees that they are valued, and I think it is something that they really need to work on.

No, I worked on a secure project, and I was the only placement student in my department. I felt very secluded from the placement community. There are big social scenes in South Bank, North Harbour and Hursley (in the South - I cannot speak for further afar) but if you are located in the smaller locations there is little or no effort to integrate you with the rest of the Placement community.

My base location was situated very close to my parental home, so I stayed there without having to pay rent for the year, so for me, the cost of living was so cheap. My local area in Farnborough was fairly cheap to socialise and I was also only 15 miles away from my University I was also able to socialise there, and as it is normally targeted at students, was also cheap.

Farnborough itself didn't have much nightlife, just a few pubs, but local areas such as Camberley and Fleet have bars and nightclubs as well as pubs. As I said before it is only 15 miles from my University, where I continued to participate in Sports clubs and Societies, and where the night life was good.

IBM always supported employees doing give back events, which could be anything from helping out an interviews to attending fairs to promote IBM to working with children and technology. Aside from that, in my location there were very few to none, and I mainly would travel back to my University to get involved with Sports Clubs and Societies. However, IBM do host activities and sports and even hold a Corporate Games where employees can take part in many different sports against other companies and locations, but being in a smaller location, you don't always get those opportunities.