Account management and sales (marketing) Review

My placement was enjoyable in most aspects. These include the flexibility of working (ie working from home; having an understanding manager), friendly colleagues, opportunities to shadow other parts of the business (ie sales, operations), a large graduate and intern community which regularly has organised socials and events. It did, however, seem a bit slow to start for a lot of the interns.

Within my team and around the business I felt like my opinion was valued and everyone in the business is more than happy to help out in any way they can. Regardless of my colleagues position within the overall hierarchy, they are always happy to meet. Depending on your manager, you may sometimes be given pieces of work which seem like no one else wants to do, but this is likely to be common in most workplaces working as an intern.

My manager never got frustrated with me for not knowing how to do something. I never felt in trouble or treated differently for asking for help. Within the wider business, my colleagues have always been happy to support if they can, regardless of their team and whether I had worked with them before or not.

The work load was very up and down. Some days I would be very busy but not to a point where it got stressful - if this was the case, my manager would support me. There were many days where I would run out of work to do, but this is avoidable by firstly, asking for more work from your manager and, secondly, staying in touch with people in other business units and asking if there is anything you can help with.

My responsibilities grew as I became more comfortable with the work I was doing, as well as the business as a whole. I have run multiple campaigns and worked on projects which will lead to the creation of new business areas. There is usually opportunities to gain more responsibility as you progress through your placement by proving yourself to your colleagues and management.

The skills I have learned about how to behave in an office environment and interact with people within it are invaluable. Networking is a huge part of the internship experience and my network has grown as a result. Skills such as time management and presenting are something that will stick with me after my placement and help with applying for graduate roles.

The atmosphere changes on a daily basis depending on the amount of people working at home/at client sites. The office is very open and hotdesking means you often sit with different people which complements the friendly company culture. Due to the large intern and graduate community, there is always people around for lunch etc.

The internship scheme didn't have as much structure as the graduate scheme which is a shame. It would have been good to have some more structure surrounding training/development and targets, but this can often depend on your manager (mine was very good at setting targets but some didn't set them at all).

Most of the investment in my personal training and development came from my team rather than the wider company. I was lucky as my team were able to send me to specific training days and conferences which helped with my job role, however, a lot of the training provided by Atos was online which is disengaging and often irrelevant to your day to day job. At time it felt that the graduates were more valued than the interns as we would be leaving in just a year.

I would like to come back to Atos as a graduate as the graduate scheme provides a much more structured start to your career with an opportunity to progress through the internal hierarchy as well as different business units. It is very easy to move around the company due to the flexible company culture

Very expensive.