European Onboarding Assistant Review

I enjoyed my 12 month placement with IBM as a Euopean Onboarding Assistant. It was a great opportunity to work for a global company and to get an understanding of working in a corporate environment. The role was interesting and to begin with there was a steep leaning curve but as I became more settled, the role became much easier. After performing the role, I realised that the area of HR wasn't for me so the placement also helped in the sense of deciding on my degree specialisation and future career path.

For this role, the majority of the internal and greater team were based outside of the UK, predominantly in Romania, India and Germany. Due to this, at first I thought it would be extremely difficult to forge relationships with the team. However, weekly team calls and team bonding calls helped overcome this, as well as talking to the team members daily over Sametime and the telephone. I definitely felt valued by my colleagues and we worked together to create a strong team.

Being in the same location as my Task Manager, we were working in close proximity which meant that I always had support and guidance when needed. There was also always support available from the wider team, everyone was willing to help when needed. As for placement support and guidance, we received regular information via email from Foundation and received swift responses when sending any questions to the Foundation task ID.

At the start of the twelve month placement, with the steep learning curve that comes with this particular role, I was very busy. The fact that there were only two of us in the team at the time to carry out all daily/weekly team tasks meant that I had a high volume of tasks to complete. After I had performed the role for some time, tasks began to take less time to complete, freeing up some time each day. When two new members joined our team, my work load again was high due to the daily training that I needed to provide. After several weeks, the new team members were fully competent and had taken over many of our daily tasks, leaving me with much less work to do on a daily basis. Overall, the work load varied but it was fairly well balanced up until the new members taking over our roles in preparation for us leaving the placement scheme.

At the start of the twelve month placement, with the steep learning curve that comes with this particular role, I was very busy. The fact that there were only two of us in the team at the time to carry out all daily/weekly team tasks meant that I had a high volume of tasks to complete. After I had performed the role for some time, tasks began to take less time to complete, freeing up some time each day. When two new members joined our team, my work load again was high due to the daily training that I needed to provide. After several weeks, the new team members were fully competent and had taken over many of our daily tasks, leaving me with much less work to do on a daily basis. Overall, the work load varied but it was fairly well balanced up until the new members taking over our roles in preparation for us leaving the placement scheme.

Throughout my placement Foundation offered a number of educational sessions and events to improve our professional skills and knowledge of the company as a whole. Sessions included CV writing, graduate application advice and pointers as well as being a great opportunity to network with more senior members of staff. One thing that could be improved upon is the number of Foundation events held throughout the year as these were enjoyable and very helpful. Overall many of my professional skills were improved upon through my time at IBM, particularly my public speaking and organisational skills which will help with my final year of study as well as in my chosen career path.

My placement was based in the Farnborough IBM Office, which was very quiet, with only a handful of other staff members in the same location, this was probably emphasised due to the buildings closure approaching. So there was very little atmosphere and I had very little interaction face-to-face with anyone outside of my team. However I did have the opportunity to work out of the North Harbour Office for four weeks and spent some time in the South Bank Office, which were much busier offices with a much better atmosphere. I think the working day would have been much more enjoyable at a different IBM location with a bigger Intern/Graduate community.

The twelve month work placement was set up well, with the inductions planned for the end of the week and start dates falling on the following Monday. I think two days was a perfect length for the induction, allowing plenty of time for each topic that needed to be discussed as well as giving time for networking with fellow interns. The education sessions were spread out across the twelve months of the placement which meant that there was always something on offer to get involved with throughout the year. There were three reviews throughout the placement, a three month, six month and final review, all of which we were well informed about and were well positioned.

In terms of personal training and development as discussed previously, there were a number of educational sessions held across the year. Some of these aided with presenting ability, professionalism, networking etc. All of which are core skills needed in any chosen career. However, many of the education sessions were IBM specific, I feel that it would have been beneficial to have some sessions that were more broad. Overall, I do feel that IBM invested in the placement students and our development.

The graduate roles on offer with IBM are very appealing and there are a wide range of roles on offer. One of the most appealing aspects is the flexibility of the Graduate scheme, with many of the roles operating on a rotational basis, giving you the opportunity to experience different roles throughout the two years on program.

As discussed previously, Farnborough was a very quiet location with very few placement students based at this location. Due to this, there was a very poor social scene. Only twice were social events held at this location. Occasionally I had the opportunity to socialise with placement students based at other locations, but this was a rare occurrence.

In order to partake in the placement with IBM I had to move to the base location from my hometown in South Wales. I lived in student accommodation with five final year students, in Guildford (which was much cheaper than I could find anywhere near Farnborough but was still expensive). Due to this, much of my wage was spent on the cost of living in such an expensive area and on petrol costs from travelling to and from Farnborough. This meant I had very little money spare for socialising.

As discussed previously, Farnborough was a very quiet area with not much around the local area. This was part of the reason I chose to live in Guildford, a much busier student area. I am glad I chose this location to live as there was much more to do in the evenings. However, if I chose to live to live in Farnborough I would not have had as enjoyable experience.

In my opinion, there was very little opportunity to get involved in activities outside of work. This again, was due to the lack of people in this base location and the lack of fellow placement students. However, I feel that if I was based in South Bank or North Harbour, there were many more activities held outside of work and this could have made my placement more enjoyable from a socialising point of view.