Trainee Trading Process Assistant Review

I really enjoyed my placement at Matalan, I was given all the necessary support needed during my year there & given a lot of opportunities to learn all I could in my short time at Matalan.

Everyone at Matalan made me feel extremely valued and part of the family even though I was only there for a small amount of time.

My manager helped me a lot with both my personal and professional development while at Matalan. I was given independent development time, the chance to go on masterclasses & 1 to 1s with my manager. I was also given a 12 month plan for my time on my placement, this included objectives for me to meet at set times & diary invites with different stakeholders across the business.

This varied day to day depending on what work we had on for the week. If it was a slow day there was always something admin or development wise to be done. Busy days were always planned out between the team to help prioritise work.

I was given the same responsibility as anyone with a permanent role at Matalan. I had to chance to run workshops & hold my own meetings both with and without support by my team. I was also given the chance to work as much as I could towards a Matalan career path - this allowed me to learn & experience everything someone who was permanent would experience.

Doing a placement is really useful as its the chance to put things you've learnt at university into play & see real life examples. It was really useful to me personally as I used my experience at Matalan to help me with my dissertation. Everyone at Matalan were really helpful & more than happy to help me with my studies! The behavioral masterclasses at Matalan were really useful, such as the presenting class as when going back to university there's a lot of assignments that require presenting so I go a lot of practice for this

The Matalan office atmosphere is really good, the office is open plan but you don't feel uncomfortable to walk through the office. Everyone is really friendly and you can easily walk to somones desk if you needed too. The building is also modern & has all of the necessities needed.

My placement was organised before I started. On joining Matalan I had a clear plan of what I was going to learn over the 12 months of my placement. This outlined what I needed to learn, what masterclasses I was attending & who in the business I could shadow and learn from. I was the second student to go into that role so with it being new I had the chance to grow and develop the role as I developed at Matalan.

Matalan offer a lot of investment in your development, There's a website dedicated to training, development and more. I was encouraged to try all the masterclasses and try to get as involved as I could. I also had dedicated time bi weekly from my Matalan to look at my work load as well as my personal development.

I was offered a permanent position with Matalan after my placement! The accommodated me in my role while I went back to university, allowing me to work part time around my days in uni.

I worked on the same team as one of the other placement students which was good to share experiences. Everyone at Matalan is really social we regularly do team outings & team activities.

I lived from home & drove to my placement so can't fully comment on the cost of living.

Matalan head office is based outside of Liverpool, about a 30 minute drive away from the city centre. The nightlife in Liverpool is amazing, there is literally something for everyone. There's not so much around Matalan head office but there's a few pubs and restaurants we've visited as a team.