Technology Industrial Placement Review

I enjoyed my placement working for Fidelity as I felt regardless of the work I was doing that I was treated like a full time employee rather then a student that would only be there a year. I was given a good amount of responsibility and felt welcomed from the moment I joined.

The team I was placed in was based in India, with only my manager and myself in the UK. Despite this barrier I still felt valued by my team although all communication was over skype making it harder to integrate with them. I was also given the opportunity to visit India to meet my team.

I was given a lot of support form the early careers team and could go to them at any time to ask for guidance or support if I needed it as they were very friendly. I had several catch ups with my line manager so she could check how I was getting on and give me any guidance that I required.

On my placement I did find that some days were a lot slower then others, as I joined my team before a very important deadline I found on some days that my team were to busy to include me or explain what was going on. This gave me a lot of time to do my own reading and research into what my team were developing and when I had something to do the time flew by.

From the very start of my placement I felt as if I was treated like a full time employee and was given the responsibility as such. After a month of shadowing someone doing a similar job, I was soon allowed to take my own meetings and really felt I was contributing to the team.

I am studying Computer Science and found that my placement did not provide any technical skills that could help with my degree. However it did provide me with a strong understanding of how my technical skills I had learnt at university could be applied to a real world situation. As well as many soft skills and experience that I could not get from my degree.

I worked in the Surrey office of Fidelity but also had the opportunity to also visit the London offices. The London office was much busier then the Surrey office which took a more casual approach. The atmosphere was pleasant everyone was friendly and made me feel welcome to the company.

When I joined Fidelity I was mentored for a month by the previous years industrial placement student. He could show me the ropes and I just took over when he left, this made me feel that I was taking on an actual job rather than just shadowing my manager. However I do feel the placement could offer rotations or more opportunities to work in other aspects of the company.

In the first months at Fidelity we were given Lunch and Learn sessions twice a week to teach us about all the different aspects of Fidelity, these were very helpful and interesting but I wish they had continued after the Summer interns had left. We are also given the opportunity to go on training courses and exams for the investment side.

Future employment options would be appealing to me after my placement if I was given the opportunity to work in London rather then there Surrey office. As I want to work in London to experience living in London in a busier situation rather then the slightly less social life of living in Surrey.

At the start of my year when there was also summer interns we had several socials and bonded with them. However as half the group were in London and the other half in Surrey is was hard to meet up and stay connected with them after the induction weeks. My team are in India so it is hard to stay social with them outside work.

As I worked in Surrey the cost of living was very low. Fidelity provided a free bus from the train station in the morning to the offices, this helped keep cost down. Any socialising tended to involve traveling into London and back which could be expensive as there was not as much to do in Surrey.

In Surrey the nightlife was non existent. However it was only a 30 minute train to central London where the nightlife was much more interesting although expensive. This did make some issues with getting home but with plenty of the grads living in London this was never much of an issue.

I believe that in the London office there was many more opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work where as in Surrey I had the opportunity to join a softball team but other then that I found it hard to get involved in activities outside work with my colleagues.