Solutioning and Estimating Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my year-long work placement at IBM. It was good to gain first-hand experience in a business environment, develop a professional relationship with colleagues and have a genuine responsibility on the account.

I felt extremely values by all of my colleagues. These range from my immediate team, the wider account, and even the executive partners. There is a great level of mutual respect, and interns are perceived as 'regular employees'.

During my year, I have had multiple managers and each one has provided the necessary support and guidance when required. Although working independently is necessary within a business, it is important to know when to seek assistance. Within my immediate team, my colleagues also offer support on occasions, which is important to ensure we achieve the same mutual goal.

Overall, I had a good balance of work on a daily basis. I had some set tasks which were completed on certain days, and several meetings throughout the week. There were also many ad hoc tasks which regularly arose due to the nature of my role, meaning prioritising key tasks is important.

During my placement, I experienced two distinctly different roles. The first involved a high level of admin, however as I had only just joined, it was good to take a step back and view the account as a whole, rather than jumping into a specialised role. My second role came with much more responsibility, as I was involved with the pricing of opportunity requests from our client, and responding to them directly.

Although neither role was directly financial, I had frequent exposure to financial figures, as I was pricing up pieces of work, and checking the financial workbooks to see the current/forecaster effort and revenue of a project. I have developed other skills such as teamwork, presenting and Microsoft Office, which will assist me beyond my degree.

The atmosphere is fun and informal which goes towards breaking boundaries, allowing issues to be raised without fear or hesitation, making the office a really nice place to work. There are many younger people such as graduates, apprentices and other interns, but there is a good balance between these and the remaining people in the office.

My work placement was well organised, with several set periods for target evaluation and setting. I had a visit from my university around the mid point of my year, and had a meeting which also included my Task Manager. I had a 3 month and 6 month review with my professional development manager to assess my progress during the year. I had frequent, more informal meetings with my line manager about short term and long term targets.