Cognitive Technology Enablement Review

I was involved in a variety of excellent projects across my 12 months at IBM, which allowed me to deliver real business value in a multitude of areas. My involvements enabled me to establish my personal brand, develop crucial transferable skills, leverage my core strengths and build upon my weaknesses. This provided me with an excellent platform for kickstarting my career within Technology for Business.

I worked with a fantastic team at IBM that truly lives the company's values every day, which created a very positive environment to work in. Given that my team was based globally, we relied heavily on WebEx and other digital means to maintain strong positive colleague relations.

As an IBM Placement Student, you are assigned a Task Manager, who you work with on a day-to-day basis, and an Early Professional Manager (EPM) who supports your personal development more holistically. My Task Manager and EPM were brilliant and gave me the support I needed from day 1, whilst also seeking to challenge me to push myself throughout the placement.

Personally, I was very busy on a daily basis. However, this is primarily because I pushed to involve myself in a wide range of projects that were suited to my strengths. As a result, I felt in complete control of how much work I had at any one time, which removed the dependency I placed on others to provide me with work, making for a fulfilling experience.

The amount of responsibility I was given expanded as I proved my value and established my personal brand within the team. Initially I worked on projects that provided internal value to my team, however by the end of my placement, I was delivering presentations to 350+ people, including the COO of Global Business Services Europe, promoting a brand-new communication initiative .

Over the course of my placement, I developed key transferable skills, which included effective communication, stakeholder management, leadership, leveraging resources etc. I also developed my technical skills in Javascript, Python, and SQL, working to build automated solutions to time-consuming business problems. All of these skills will be valuable for my degree studies and beyond.

My office was a great place to be as I got on very well with my.colleagues professionally and personally... AND we had a miniature basketball hoop, which is always a positive! However, the office was relatively small, and I was often surrounded by a limited number of people, given that most of my team worked remotely.

The IBM Graduate roles provide a lot of opportunity in a variety of business areas. I am currently undergoing the Intern 2 Graduate application process for their Consulting roles.

The social scene was great... I have made some brilliant friends during my time here and we already have plans to meet up beyond the placement. At my base location, there was over 50 other placement students and a brand-new 'games hub', which was ideal for meeting new people.

I was based in Winchester, which was relatively expensive for both rent and socialising.

There are a few bars, which are open late, but I would definitely not recommend Winchester for its nightlife. Southampton is <15 minutes drive and easily accessible by train, which has a much better nightlife.

Since joining IBM I have started rock climbing with one of the other placement students... something I'd never really done before. Southampton is the place to be for activities outside of work.