Financial Analyst Review

I've thoroughly enjoyed my placement through the year. It's allowed me to venture into the world of finance and provide me with the ideal start to my career path. There were times when 1) work became repetitive and 2) there was too much expected of me for my role and experience, but overall this was just something small in a year full of very good opportunities to build on in the future.

I felt extremely valued as my work was broadcast regularly to senior managers and partners, and providing my own insight into the work I completed. I took control of a presentation each week regarding revenue improvement, and was able to add my own analysis in order to improve our profitability as an account and within IBM in general.

Support was provided in numerous ways, through reviews, meetings, and feedback. The problem was that I often needed to go out of my way in order to communicate to some managers for support. This was fine to begin with, but when I took on more responsibility and engaged with more senior members of staff this became more problematic.

The role involved a lot of work to begin with, as obviously learning brand new elements. Once this had been picked up and perfected, I was able to add more to my job responsibilities. However, as a result of this and my enthusiasm to build on my skills, I often felt like I was taken advantage of when there was work that others did not want to pick up.

A lot of responsibility! I was in charge of running the financials for the account I was based on, with additional work elements on top of this in which my work was passed onto partner/stakeholders/portfolio leads, etc. I was able to engage with the team to propose my own ideas all on my own accord.

I believe the soft skills will certainly assist with my final year at university. By doing a presentation each week to such influential people in the business as well as the communication and time-keeping skills, this has furthered my ability to analyse and demonstrate the information I have picked up on. I'm also hoping to develop on my economic and business knowledge picked up from this year in my studies, especially in my dissertation.

General atmosphere was great, very relaxed and knew pretty much everyone in the office.

Placement was well organised, knew the role I was taking over a couple of months before I even started. Handover was descriptive and thorough, and further training through the year was well planned.

We had various career events to further the skills being developed on in the placement role, for example going down to head office to go through career pathways, presentation skills, etc.

Cost of living was extremely cheap - going out was not a problem and housing was cheap as in a student area.

Nightlife was fine, few bars and clubs to go to, but would have to travel elsewhere if you wanted a better night out!

There were sport teams open to be a part of, e.g. five a side football.