Project Coordinator Review

I really enjoyed my work placement at IBM. I was able to seek many opportunities in within my role and for interests outside of my role too. They have a good placement structure which allows you to keep checkpoints and document what you have completed throughout the year. Everybody wants the best for you and helps you where they can.

My team were brilliant, we had retrospectives in our team- which are bi-weekly meetings to say what went well, what could have been improved and what didn't go so well. Gratitude to other team members was always recognised in these meetings, praising the work they had done or the praising the support they gave to others.

My foundation manager- (placement manager) was brilliant in giving support when you had any issues regarding work or personal placement issues. However, the support given was very much dependent on how much you chose to interact. If you did not contact your foundation manager, they would provide monthly group placement meetings and lunch and learns, but would not really contact you to ask about how they can support you. My task manager (role manager) offered monthly checkup meetings with me to see how I was doing, how I was finding work etc, and would try to help where I needed it. For both cases- the support you got was dependent on how much effort you put in to get in contact with them.

My role differs in that the business depends on the number of projects available. For the first half of the year, I was relatively busy but not overwhelmingly busy. This gave me time to shadow elsewhere and complete learning in other areas of interest. The second half of my placement, a large project came about, so I became extremely busy with supporting this alongside my other role duties. Of course, with COVID-19, other team members' availability made this busier too due to childcare responsibiliteis.

When I was first starting the year, I was given my role responsibilities to learn and get used too. For this, I was given full responsibility to complete my role. Once I had this under my belt, I started looking towards learning new technical skills from other team members. After a while of shadowing these skills and learning them alongside other team members, I was given a lot more responsibility using this to run projects and respond to client requests on my own.

IBM have a learning platform that allows you to learn skills that you are interested in. I used this to learn more about industries and lines of work that I could see myself going into after University. Also, everybody is willing to teach you new skills or help you, so whatever you want to learn in your year, you can- just ask around. In terms of degree studies, I do Economics, so my placement wasn't really related, but I definitely learnt a lot for my future career path and future applications.

There was a good cohort of interns, so at lunch, it would be a great atmosphere to be in. However, the IBM site I was situated at was looking to be closed in the next few years so the older colleagues in the building was quite dreary.

Very well organised. They had a great induction for all the interns, and also a christmas thames party (which happens every year :) ). So the intern community was very strong and felt reassuring. In terms of the overall placement layout, we had placement journals that we were required to fill in at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months. At these points, we would have checkups with our foundation managers and task managers together and discuss next steps, feedback, any queries etc.

They are extremely encouraging in ensuring you get involved in extra learning through their learning channels. We even had a learning day in our team that allocated a day for us to learn and invest in skills we were interested in outside of our role. There were workshops and other learning opportunities that are made available throughout the year, but in some cases you do have to ask if there is something in particular you want to learn about.

They have a particular intern to graduate application that allows you to skip the assessment centre, and they give you good advice on how to complete this application towards the end of your placement.

We had a good amount of interns at our site, and luckily we lived quite close to each other, so we would often end up out for food, to the pub, clubs etc. For colleagues, we would have team meals and often group starbucks trips- overall I would say there was a good social scene.

The cost of living was relatively ok. It was not based in London so the price of accommodation was a lot cheaper, but the food and drinks prices represented those of London Prices.

The nightlife in our area was ok... There were a few clubs to choose from but often the best part of the night would just be going to somebody's house before the club. I have been to places with better clubs but they weren't the worst nights out I've had.

Due to Covid I spent the second half of my year working from home, so I can't really speak for that half of the year as most activities were not available. However, in the first half of the year, there were some opportunities provided from the company,e.g. offers for theatre trips, but there wasn't much advertisement for what you could get involved in elsewhere, e.g sports clubs etc.