Presales Associate Review

I have really enjoyed my placement year at SAP and couldn't recommend it more as a company. You are really looked after as an intern and give all the same benefits and opportunities as anyone else. I enjoyed my placement year so much that I have thought about applying for their Presales academy after I graduate and would love to come back if I was given the opportunity.

I feel as valued by my colleagues as I would be by my peers. In my team at SAP the interns are treated the same as you would be if you were a full time employee working for SAP. We are involved in the large events such as InnovationX and given the same responsibilities.

I was given the right amount of guidance by my manager, just enough so I knew who to go to if I wanted to learn more about a certain area of the business or if I needed help, and not too much that I felt like an intern who was just there to do a placement year and thats all. The steerco team, who ran the placement scheme, was also very helpful in putting on extra sessions to help guide and support us throughout our year.

The amount of work you had would depend on what you were interested in and how productive you were. With SAP's placement program you are able to spend 30% of your time working on projects that weren't your assigned job role. Once I had completed my daily role I would reach out to people, who were very willing to help, where I had an interest in that area of the business. So, very rarely was I stuck with nothing to do.

During my placement at SAP I was given a lot of responsibility including customer facing content. This would include creating videos such as demos or messages that we would send out to various customers. I was also in charge of the Presales managers reports that I was able to make my own and would have to complete on a weekly basis. It was our decision how much we chose to take on but if you were proactive and wanted to learn you could be given projects that involved people who were very high up.

I believe that my placement at SAP has helped me develop and improve my soft skills and application of knowledge, as opposed to specific knowledge I will use in my degree. For example my presentation skills and communication towards an older generation is something that is necessary in life and will be very useful in my working years. On my placement year I specialised in SAP's analytics tool and realised where my degree of Maths can be applied to real world scenarios and how you are able to manipulate past results to see future predictions of data.

In the office we are split by our department so I sat with the Presales team who are very friendly and chatty and there is always a friendly face to have a chat with. Generally the office was very busy and an upbeat atmosphere. Most people in the office are always happy to help and chat.

I would say the placement scheme has definitely done all they could to help me through my placement year. There would be lots of opportunities to opt in to training such as soft skills, so a presentation training or excel training if you wanted to improve in that area. You would also be offered the buddy scheme which was really good and allowed you to have someone to go to for help if you needed. The onboarding process was a perfect handover period as you had a month with the current intern you were taking over from. This was really helpful as you had someone who had gone through the same as you and understood how it felt.

As an intern you are enrolled into an onboarding period which is where you will get basic training in Microsoft tools and anything else you need for your role. Depending on your team you may also have training in areas such are interpersonal skills or story telling. There are also plenty of online courses that you can complete, whether thats a more advanced course or basic training.

SAP run an academy in Sales and Presales which is similar to a graduate scheme. A lot of people describe your placement year as a year long interview if you are interested in coming back to SAP after university. You have to be proactive though and show that you want to come back and be a bit different and not just do your day to day job. I will be applying for the Presales academy and will hopefully be successful, as I wish to carry on my career at SAP once I graduate.

Due to there being 75 interns on the program at SAP, the social aspect is very good at SAP, and I feel as though I have made friendships that I will carry on after my year at SAP. Not only are we able to socialise at work, we also meet up outside of work whether thats for drinks or an activity. There is also a pool room and gym, so we are able to socialise there after work or at lunch.

The cost of your placement year obviously depends on where you live. Before starting you are put into a facebook group with all the other interns so you can choose to live together. I live in central London with some friends from university, so for me it is a little expensive but you are getting paid during the year which obviously helps. Overall I think it all depends on what you want out of your year at SAP. A good thing about the location of the office though is how close it is to the station and the free bus that travels to and from the office regularly.

There isn't much nightlife near to the office in Feltham but there are lots of opportunities elsewhere. With the free shuttle bus to the station it allows you to travel into central London very easily in 30 minutes. As a community this year quite a few people live around Richmond and Clapham, so we would tend to go there after work for drinks.

There are activities you can get involved in out of work. You may have team drinks or team enablement days where you would be offsite. There is a football team as well which allows you to play once a week. But if you wanted to start something yourself that you were interested in or organise an event, the company would support you and assist you as much as they can to help make it happen.