Technical Support Review

I enjoyed my placement as it gave me a feel of what working life is like in the UK. Having lived and worked overseas, I've learnt that I prefer working here due to better employee welfare and a relatively larger amount of vacation days. My work experience was okay; a generally repetitive job in the same location without much change. I enjoyed that to an extent, but it would be nice to have a change once in a while.

My colleagues were extremely friendly and of great assistance whenever I encountered any difficulty during my job. I feel I could approach any of them and get help needed. This was especially important at the start of my placement when I was still new and learning the ropes and how the organisation worked as a whole.

My supervisor was flexible and approachable and I could go to him if I needed anything. He was very comfortable with arrangements related to working from home, as I didn't need to be present in the office in order to do my job. We had monthly meetings where I could bring up any workplace problems to him in private which I felt was very important, considering that there are matters which can't always be discussed with everyone in the open.

I was very busy and was constantly given new things to do even when I had tasks I was still far from completing. I feel more manpower would've been helpful to the team and would've lightened everyone's load.

I was treated the same as any other full-time member of the team for purposes of workload distribution. Initially, when I was still developing my skillset, I was given fewer tasks to complete but over time and as I got better at my role, I started sharing the team's workload equally as with the other full-time employees.

As my job involved providing technical support for a specific software suite, there isn't much in terms of transferable skills. What I can takeaway however, are soft skills learnt during communications with clients and teammates. Generic commands used in the troubleshooting of various operating systems are also takeaways although I've more or less already learnt these during my degree in university, hence this is more of a refresher.

The atmosphere in the office was generally quite relaxed, as the building I worked in wasn't client-facing and didn't see many visitors. We could talk amongst ourselves about our day and make jokes with one another freely. My manager allowed us to report in smart casual instead of business attire too, for the above reason, and that was very pleasant as it meant we could work in comfortable attire.

We were assigned a separate manager whom we can speak to if we had any concerns outside of day-to-day responsibilities and this manager would correspond with us every now and then with administrative tasks we need to complete periodically. There were meetings every 3 months as well, which provided for a means to measure progress.

Aside from product training, there was none.

I feel there are definitely roles within the organisation that offer more than the position I had worked with. I am keen to try and re-apply for these, even if it means trying something that I've not done before.

Events were occasionally held by interns as a whole but these were mostly during special events (e.g. Christmas). Otherwise, there weren't very many.

As I worked in London, getting a flat here is expensive and most of my salary went toward paying rent and bills. I don't socialise much so I'm unable to discuss that point but food and amenities were reasonably affordable. Transport was affordable as well, since tfl is cheaper than privately-run transport companies outside of London

I worked in Bedfont, near Heathrow Airport. There were barely any areas for nightlife in the area, not that I was particularly interested.

There were many opportunities available to interns who wanted to get involved in activities beyond their job scope. We were actively encouraged to take part in these, although they weren't really of interest to me.