Technical Revenue Assurance and Data Analyst Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement due to the abundance of opportunities provided to me throughout the 10 weeks. There was a wide range of activities organised for the interns ranging from BBQs to sports. This allowed a smoother transition into work life. There was also ample opportunity to learn about different areas of the business. For example, I was able to organise an insight day with Energy Marketing & Trading relatively easily. Also, I had the opportunity to work shadow a call centre agent to get exposure to the more customer facing side of the business. Moreover, I was given the opportunity to test myself with a wide range of challenging and interesting tasks: from presenting to senior managers (even the CIO at one point) to data crunching on Excel. The variety of tasks on offer meant that it was hard to feel bored.

I felt really valued by my colleagues throughout the placement. From day 1, I was taken to meetings with senior managers as my team felt I could add value to discussions. Also, my manager was always keen to highlight how much my service meant for the team during regular feedback sessions. I was also given tasks and projects of high responsibility from early on which showed the trust they put in my abilities. Also, everyone is really friendly and always ready to help with literally anything, however silly your question may be.

Initially it was really challenging to keep up with all the acronyms and technical terms being thrown around. Especially as I came from a non-technical background, the IT terms were quite tricky to understand. However, management was always quick to answer any of my queries and also direct me to the right people if I wanted help with specific software.

My manager was a strong believer in maintaining a good work life balance so she didn't want to see me in the office past my work hours. This was great, but also posed an interesting challenge relating to time management as I was expected to finish all my tasks within the time frame. This kept me quite busy on most days and helped me improve my time management and efficiency in doing tasks. Throughout the placement, there was never a time where I had absolutely nothing that I could be doing.

From day 1 I was given a bundle of responsibility which seemed overwhelming at first but once I understood my team's functions, I was able to enjoy my role and the challenges posted. I feel that Centrica really develops their interns well and gives ample opportunities to take risks and learn from mistakes. Personally, I was given a lot of responsibility as my team was relatively new (about 1 year old). So I had tasks which built the framework for the team to use in the foreseeable future. Also due to a lack of human resources, I was put in charge of critical tasks such as delivering the monthly business report to the IS leadership team (CIO and team). The support and guidance provided by my colleagues made these projects much more manageable.

I have managed to diversify my skill set over the past 10 weeks. A key highlight includes the 'Present with Impact' training we received delivered from Adrian Kirk of More Than Words. This session was the most enjoyable training session that I have ever had on communicating effectively. It has helped me be more self-assured, confident and open. It has also shown me that I actually enjoy presenting more than I had previously thought. I feel that the communication skills that I picked up in the placement will help me in any role or job in the future. I have also gained a wide range of technical training: a bit of coding; debugging in SAP; and advanced Excel training. The excel skills I have picked up will be useful wherever there is big data crunching involved.

Everyone was really friendly and had great sense of humour. There was a tight community feel which made me feel at home as soon as I had started. I was lucky to have a couple of graduates right next to me who were really helpful in showing me around and giving key tips.

The placement was very well organised with many external activities. One suggestion for improvement would be to have more days for training at the start. People may have different opinions on this as some may want to get into work ASAP, but I felt that a bit more training would have been really useful. Otherwise, organisation was really efficient and there wasn't much waiting around. Transport provided for free between offices.

The firm invests in you heavily. There are a wide range of activities on offer ranging from sports to other art forms and team building games. Also, a lot of technical training was provided aswell with Excel training and presentation training. The present with impact training was actually the best training on presentations that I have ever had. Everything is very interactive and enjoyable.

Great employment prospects. Very flexible so if you want to switch stream you just need to ask and speak to a few people so you understand your new stream better and the job is basically done. A lot of freedom to try out divisions of your choice and focus on certain skills that your want to improve. The organisation is growing and ever changing so very interesting to be part of the firm. Also Centrica values its youths so a lot of responsibility given at an early stage which you may not get elsewhere.

Centrica provide free accommodation and arrange many socials.

Worked in Staines so really close to London but not as expensive as London. Best of both worlds.

Pretty good seeing as it was really close to London.

Many sports clubs, societies and volunteering opportunities. Centrica partner with a charity for the homeless called Shelter. For every hour you volunteer, Centrica pays the charity of your choice some amount. As interns or graduates, theres a lot of internal demand for you to get involved in blogging, website creation, social media and many more activities.