Economic Analyst Review
by Office for National Statistics
This review was submitted over 4 years ago, so some of the information it contains may no longer be relevant.
Rating
-
The Role
3.5
-
The Company
2.9
-
The Culture
3.8
- 1. To what extent did you enjoy your work placement or internship?
- 2. To what extent did you feel valued by your colleagues?
- 3. To what extent were you given support and guidance by management/your supervisor(s)?
- 4. How busy were you on a daily basis?
- 5. How much responsibility were you given during your placement?
- 6. To what extent did/will the skills you developed, and training you received, assist you in your degree studies and beyond?
- 7. What was the general atmosphere in your office?
- 8. How well organised was the overall work placement or internship set up?
- 9. In terms of personal training and development, to what extent did the company or firm invest in you?
- 10. What were the perks on your work placement?
- 11. How appealing are future employment prospects within the organisation?
- 12. Was there a good social scene amongst any fellow placement students/colleagues?
- 13. What was the cost of living and socialising in the area you worked in?
- 14. What was the Nightlife like in the area you worked?
- 15. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work?
The Role
I'm not a maths lover, and although I'm naturally inquisitive the work I did begin to dull after 6 months. The work involved a lot of excel, stata and word.
There's a large student community at the ONS when it comes to placements so I felt like I made many friends there -
I had two line managers and they differed greatly, whilst my inital manager wasn't interested at all in my development, the second line manager gave me great feedback.
I proactively sought out work regularly. And I managed to work for three teams simultaneously, did extra curricular activities including learning to code and organising talks at the office which meant everyday I was busy.
A fair amount of responsibility was given to me, although this was most likely due to the nature of the division I worked in (EAA) and the fact I worked across many teams.
Coding, and the self discipline I developed over placement will put me in good stead for my final year.
The Company
Office politics is everywhere and due to the fact our office was heavily understaffed for a vast majority I would say there was a fairly toxic environment for the initial months in the office, although this did improve with time.
Fairly well set up, there was a clear start and end with two times that allowed us to recieve feedback.
Each student at the ONS receives a bursary that the department will use to spend on travel or training, whilst I used this only for my coding and the occasional travel - the ONS did sponsor a friend of mine to take a university module in coding - so there is huge potential to learn a lot here
Flexi Time
Subsidised/Company Gym
National Travel
Financial Bonus
Company Parties/Events
Staff Sales/Staff Shop
Working from home
Within the civil service they're not allowed to offer jobs after, however we did spend time practising the assessment centre whilst at the ONS and we now have a large range of experience to draw on to use as examples
The Culture
As mentioned there's a huge cohort of students at the ONS - I believe there were almost 30-40 of us and we regularly went out on nights out and supported each other through the placement year
Cardiff was very cheap to live, rent was low although travel wasn't too expensive - on buses they do require you to have the exact change as they don't give that out
Compared to where I come from, Cardiff's nightlife was alright but nothing mind blowing - plenty of nice pubs though
Plenty, if you keep your eyes open - there were many extra curricular to get involved in
Details
Placement (10 Months+)
Business Operations, Computer Science, Economics
Wales
September 2018
