Finance Functions Analyst - Placement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed working here, for my first proper work experience it was much better than I could have ever anticipated, the people who work here and how they have treated me and challenged me has meant a lot to me. From day one until the end I have enjoyed working here from the work to also the opportunities available through Cummins outside of the office.

I feel really valued and this has given me a huge confidence boost the extent of tasks & projects given to me show this. I have been treated excellently by my colleagues and they have really made my time here memorable.

It is because of my supervisors and mentors that I have been able to develop & grow this year. When I may have made a mistake they have supported me and assured me that it is nothing to worry about. The training and exposure to different things that they gave me allowed me to improve my skills such as excel and my financial knowledge.

In the first 6 months I had occasions where i was not too busy. However in the last 6 months it has been non-stop with a lot to do and for me I prefer to be constantly at it or to have a goal to achieve. So in the last 6 months once i had learnt my role my days were particularly busy.

In the last 6 months of my placement i was given a huge amount of responsibility i was leading a project to do with cost reduction were the goal was a difficult but achievable one. I also ran the whole month end process within my team which is the biggest part of the month. So this responsibility that was given made me feel valued and filled me with confidence.

I had a lot of external training to do with adapting to the professional environment, presentations and dealing with customers which was very useful. But learning from my colleagues allowed me to develop more such as excel and the improvements in my financial knowledge will definitely aid me for university and the rest of my career. But the year has also allowed me to decide that I do want to pursue this as a career.

When it was busy obviously it can be quite quiet however the majority of the time it was a fun office. People liked to talk have a bit of a joke and everybody got along with each other which created a healthy environment for everybody to work in. I thoroughly enjoyed working

It was set up very well, the company already had a good idea of what they wanted me to do, what work, what projects. However, due to a turbulent time for the company this changed massively but the company still managed to make work challenging, to keep giving more and more responsibility which in a difficult time for the company was handled well and still allowed for me to take full advantage of my placement year.

For all of the placements (16) just at one site of cummins the company sent us on four training sessions. There was also a bursary competition in which the top 3 would win a cash prize this gave further motivation to do as much as we possibly could during the year. There were also other opportunities to seek out individual training such as project management. However, most importantly to me they invested a lot of time in me to allow me to develop learn the role before I could truly begin to kick on and deliver high levels of performance.

If it was to my same role but at a higher level I would love the opportunity to be able to do that as I really enjoyed my role and working with my team & manager. This does seem unlikely as this year the company made a lot of redundancies which reduce the opportunity for further graduate roles in the future. Outside of just this one site of cummins I do not really know much of the job prospects available and the types of jobs. I would love to continue to work here as i believe it is great to aid development and allow people to grow.

Yes, there are large amount of placements and graduates were I was working who all got along great and very often socials were organised such as nights out in town, going for meals, barbecues etc. the list goes on. Everybody was welcome to these things not just placements & graduates which created a great comradery around the workplace which allows it to be a better place to work.

The cost of living I believed was reasonable given that it is near the south, it was cheaper back home in Liverpool although if you look hard enough in this area you probably could make the savings if you really wanted to. For socialising I felt once again that it was reasonable and that you could go and have an enjoyable time without having to spend a ridiculous amount of money.

Peterborough is not the biggest of places however there still were places to go to not really places i'd enjoy going to. Although there were always people from working who were willing to go out and do things and everybody was welcome which is not something that happens everywhere else which I found great.

Yes, there were plenty of opportunities the company had it's own affinity groups such as Cultural Awareness Network, Sports & social which allowed staff members to take roles within these affinity groups and provide benefits to the company. Cummins also have a EEEC program whereby every employee has to commit 4 hours to working with community partners of the local site which is a great opportunity as no matter what level you are you can lead a project. The sports & social host a lot of events and subsidise a lot of different things such as go-karting, formula one etc.