Early Professional Attraction and Engagement Events Coordinator Review

My placement presented me with a lot of great opportunities to meet new people and network. I therefore enjoyed the social side of my placement and worked with a fun and motivating team. My role was fast-paced and I enjoyed having the chance to travel across the UK.

I felt valued by my immediate team and wider recruitment team, as well as other Early Professionals. However, at times, I did not feel valued by more senior people as I was often overlooked, or they would seek clarification and reassurance from my manager before listening or showing gratitude for my work.

I felt very supported coming into the role and knew I could speak to my task manager regarding any day job related issues, and my early professional manager for any personal problems, or any advice on how to handle situations. At times, I felt like I was given too much guidance with the job, that there was little scope for me to be creative towards the beginning.

My role has really busy periods during academic terms, which made me feel really motivated and purposeful. But when our roles close, it became really quiet and I was often having to spend my time doing online learning. I took up a few projects but naturally, these ended when I was in my quieter periods as well.

Initially, I had very little responsibility and was quite unhappy. I spoke to my early professional manager and got some advice on how to build up trust and speak with my team about how I was feeling, and as a result I was given a lot of ownership over my role for the final few months.

On a personal level, I have developed self-confidence, decision making skills, and other attributes such as motivation, leadership and resilience, which will be great for future applications and completing my degree. I study a marketing degree, but worked in recruitment marketing and was sat in HR, therefore the training and other skills I developed will not help me in the future unfortunately.

The general atmosphere was always very welcoming at first. Our London offices are a lot more lively and busier which I preferred to other location such as Portsmouth. There are a lot more early professionals in London and Hursley which made them much better places to work.

Interns are given their own role and the recruitment process is well organised to fill those roles. There is a good Foundation system to ensure the onboarding process is smooth.

A lot of education and training is made available online, and there are many opportunities to reach out and speak to people across different business units to learn about other roles.

There is only 1 main hiring business unit where the majority of Interns will apply to. This is to consulting, and so this is not appealing to me. It would be better if there were the same pathways for placement and graduate schemes.

There are a lot of placement students in London, so there is a great social life there. A lot of people formed social groups and will stay friends for a long time. Personally, I had a great social circle with some of the Apprentices - all schemes work with each other so its easy to meet a lot of different young people!

Cost of living in Portsmouth is quite low, as it is a student city.

Again, as Portsmouth is a University city, there are quite a few clubs, pubs and bars that you can go to!

Within my team, we arranged several different social activities throughout the year. In my business unit there was also a few socials arranged around christmas, and I personally organised for our business unit to go bowling as well.