Data Analytics Intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement at Travelport. There seemed to be a great work-life balance ingrained in the culture of the company which worked perfectly for me. Every employee I came across was very friendly, welcoming and easy to talk to so which absolutely contributed to me enjoying my year there. There were a lot of parts of the intern programme to get involved with outside of work, for example charity events, which were a lot of fun and also a great way to bond with other interns. On the odd occasion the work became a little overwhelming or repetitive but after discussing with my line manager, this was promptly fixed.

I felt very valued by my colleagues, they were always happy to help at any opportunity they could no matter how busy they were with their own work. The work I produced was always given praise and appreciation, constructive feedback or both. I was treated as a part of the team from the beginning and my team were always interested in what I was doing outside of the team, whether that was attending other intern presentations or charity event meetings, to how my weekends and holidays went. I can't say a bad thing about how I valued I felt by my colleagues.

I was given support and guidance from my line manager the whole duration of my placement, I clearly remember her saying several times throughout the whole year "I'm here for you as much as you're here for me" and that really made me appreciate the environment that I was in. I had weekly catch ups with her and she ensured that she asked me how I was finding everything and if I had any problems, or if there were any opportunities like shadowing that I wanted to try.

It varied throughout the year based on the projects that my team was assigned to do. There were really quiet periods where the amount of work to do was minimal however this was great as it gave me an opportunity to investigate training courses that the Travelport offered or to see what other members of my team were working on. Equally there were times in the year when my team took on a great deal of work and sometimes a whole week was non-stop in order to meet deadlines that had been set, but it was all organised and were well informed about the amount of work that would have to be done.

I was certainly given a great deal more responsibility than I expected - a lot of the work that I produced was shown directly to the airlines that I was reporting on, and I was also allowed to sit in on most of the meetings too which really gave me an idea of how far my work was going for Travelport. A lot of the time the reports that I produced for colleagues influenced business decisions or prompted action from colleagues which was a great feeling. At the beginning a lot of the reports I made were checked over before I sent them to colleagues however towards the end, my ability was trusted enough for me to just create the reports and send them over. Saying this, any customer-facing reports were always checked over first!

I have learnt or improved on a great deal of important and valuable transferable skills including time management, communication, MS Office (particularly Excel), working in a team, problem solving, the list goes on... All of these are useful in the degree and also possibly more importantly in later life, the majority of them are essential for any job role and even for doing personal tasks.

The office had a generally happy, welcoming and friendly atmosphere. Everyone in the office appreciated that everyone else was also human so we all had limits on how much work could get done in a set amount of time, how available people were for meetings and in general that people sometimes needed to get their head down. There were no unrealistic expectations on me which was helpful for building the atmosphere. Everyone in the office seemed to get on quite well and there was no hint of any sort of a hostile environment. My team was particularly friendly and we often had short conversations about less work-oriented topics if they came up which provided nice short breaks. Everyone knew that they had a job to do but also knew not to stress to the point where it was unhealthy.

The placement was pretty well set up and any hiccups or issues that any interns had were listened to and addressed. Some aspects started a little later in the placement than expected however after voicing our feedback, the HR team responsible for the programme explained that it had been noted and would be addressed for the next cohort of interns. In general it was well set up, my role certainly had a suitable amount of work set for it and its purpose in the company was evident.

It seemed that there was a near-endless amount of investment available for our personal development. There were several training courses made available to use for free (which would one would normally have to pay to access) in many programmes ranging from MS Office programmes to coding programmes like C++ or R. Shadowing was a very common opportunity made available to us; we could effectively shadow in any area of the business.

There are no direct routes to future employment within the company e.g. graduate schemes or even graduate job opportunities, however we have been informed that if there are any vacancies that a (recent) graduate could be qualified for then we will be alerted first before any external advertisements are advertised.

The social aspect between all the placement students was great, we all got along very well together and socialised at lunch and outside of work very often. The only downside was that we weren't all living very close by to each other which was often the reason why we didn't socialise sometimes.

The cost of living is quite high as, being based near Slough, we were basically subjected to London prices but on the salary of a placement student (about the average salary for a placement student). Rent and bills essentially cost around half of my salary. Socialising was also expensive but not extortionate.

Nightlife in the area was quite poor, there really were not many options and the options we did have were not ideal, but we made do.

There were plenty of opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. I played football with colleagues weekly which was a great deal of fun and also great way to get to meet more colleagues. There was also a Social Club which organised events monthly ranging from go-karting to sushi making lessons to boat parties and comedy club trips. Finally, as a part of the intern programme, we did a few charity events like the Muddy Welly 5K run and also, my highlight of the year, Tough Mudder.