Business Analyst Review

Overall, I had a work placement that gave me the opportunity to grow, develop my skills and build my business acumen. That being said my work placement was a year of two halves. The first 5 months I gained a wealth of experiences and had plenty of opportunities to expand my job role which meant I really enjoyed this part of my year. However, the remainder of my time (due to the GDPR) became solely processing Data Subject Access Requests, preventing any other opportunities due to the legal priority it took. Therefore, I found the remaining 7 months quite hard, and for me rather unengaging as this was not the role I had been brought in to do, and ultimately prevented me from getting involved in other things and carrying out my contractual job role. However, I do want to say that had it not been for DSAR’s this section would have been ranked a lot higher!

I have felt very valued by the vast amount of colleagues I am surrounded by at work on a daily basis. Senior members are never shy to give praise when it is due, and this is really encouraging from a placement student perspective. The large amount of responsibility I am given within my role displays how valued I am by my colleagues.

I felt that this year my team had to very much manage ourselves as we were given very little guidance from our manager; we were very independent. We had to allocate jobs within the team (luckily, we got on so this wasn't a problem - but may cause issues if this was not the case) and personally I felt very little support from my manager (however this could be due to them being remote - not in the office) when I was struggling in the role and needed some guidance.

I was extremely busy within my role when it changed to being 'DSAR Support'. I usually worked over my contractual hours as there was always a large amount to do. I like to be busy as it means you constantly have something to do, and something to learn about. However, in this case I felt the team had too little manpower given the workload, so the tasks became overwhelming.

I have been given a great amount of responsibility throughout my placement. I had been allocated onto a project which was very small to begin with, however has now doubled in size and is only expanding by the week. As I am responsible for tracking the finances for this project, I have taken ownership for a large majority of financial reporting, contract tracking and flowdowns to subcontractors.

I believe the skills I have picked up throughout my placement will greatly affect my performance when continuing with my degree. Not only have I grown significantly in confidence, but I have developed my excel skills to an advanced level and developed a deep understanding of the importance of business results and client success.

Everyone was very positive and friendly - always up to chat and say hello. I made amazing friends in the office who I will be keeping in touch with. During busy times when many people were on client site it could feel a little empty, but most of the time this was not the case and I had a great network of people surrounding me.

There was a program solely set up for intern students which provided the emotional support needed, educational skills you wanted to develop and generally made sure everything was going okay. You can tell they are used to dealing with a large population of interns! This being said, I feel they could utilise their set-up more. I only saw my Early Professional Manager at set times throughout the year and there didn’t seem to be a close relationship between foundation and my actual business area as they were telling me different things at times.

The company provided training throughout the year using online education and drop in workshops. I felt they were invested in my personal growth, even if you weren't intending to stay in the company for a graduate role. They only time I didn't feel as supported and invested in was when my role became DSARs and the job became repetitive so there was little room for growth, and in my opinion not a lot was done to rectify this.

Future employment prospects are very appealing within IBM. There is a lot of encouragement for placement students to seek employment within IBM following the placement year, and they often set up workshops and calls to enable placement students to listen to current graduate career experiences and to gain a better insight into the opportunities and perks of IBM as a full time employee.

The social scene has not been great throughout the year at IBM with fellow placement students. Being based in a smaller location up north has meant that I have had no contact with any other interns over the country other than those based in the same office as me. This is a great shame as the majority of placement students are based in London, where the social scene will be a lot busier.

The cost of living has been reasonable within the area I work in. I was able to find a house rather quickly and at a good price. Socialising has been rather good outside of work. On many occasions we have participated in local pub quizzes and travelled to nearby cities (eg Manchester) to visit the IBM office there and to enjoy socialising afterwards.

Nightlife in the area I worked was rather poor. The clubs were very cheap, however it was only ever lively on Tuesday and Wednesdays, which is not ideal for work. Nightlife on the weekends was rather poor, unless you were willing to go to the more expensive bars to enjoy some nicer drinks and a better atmosphere. Manchester and Liverpool were both accessible by train, however it was a struggle to travel home following an evening night out.

There have been numerous work social events outside of work, from Wednesday drinks, to BBQs and the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge. The Wednesday drinks are a good opportunity for work colleagues to enjoy casual drinks outside of the workplace and to socialise with members of the account that you may not usually get the chance to talk to - great networking opportunity!