Talent Marketing Co-Ordinator in MEA, UK and France at IBM Review

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed my work experience at IBM. I was given a lot of responsibility throughout my placement and I’ve had a range of diverse roles to do. The opportunity to have a person dedicated to your development is a massive plus and I would definitely recommend IBM as a place to do a placement.

I felt very valued by my colleagues throughout my time at IBM. I felt like my thoughts and opinions are listened to and what I said was valuable to the direction of the team. It’s also been nice to gain some feedback from my colleagues since I’ve been here which I can then use later on in my career. I would say that there is definitely some colleagues that I would like to stay in touch with after my placement and that says a lot about the community culture at IBM.

I was given a large amount of support and guidance by my manager throughout my IBM journey. I would say however that is your responsibility to network with people within the business and to park your own way if you want to apply back as a graduate. In IBM you have a three month for six months in a 12-month review and I think this feedback about how you’re performing is really important to your development throughout your placement you

I've been very busy throughout my placement year and sometimes this has been good and sometimes it has been overwhelming. At first, the management of my time wasn’t great which meant that I was overwhelmed by the amount of task that I was given. However, after speaking to my managers we made sure that the amount of task that I was given was something that I could cope with and spoke about the management of time and prioritisation. Since this point, I’ve had a good amount of work given to me and been able to manage my time effectively.

I was given a lot of responsibility throughout my placement year. In the first three months of my placement, I project managed a 5000 person event in the UK and ran some of the IBM social media accounts putting out content to a global audience.

In terms of the training that I received, I would say it was brilliant because I could have as much training as I wanted. At IBM you have a your learning platform which means that you can go in and learn about whatever you want within the organisation. You’re encouraged to do 40 hours of learning in your placement and most people go over this. Since being IBM I have done learning on block chain, agile and how to write a business proposal.

The atmosphere in the office was great to to the fact that I’ve got to work in an office with mainly interns. This meant that it was a relaxed working environment but our bosses were next doors and always ready to help. also in my particular role I was able to work at home which was a benefit meaning that I didn’t have to travel to the office every day. 

My overall role was set up well however did change when I came into the organisation. At first, my role was only looking at only a UK but this changed to me working in an EMEA position. This was not a negative change and I loved my role but definitely something I wasn't expecting when I joined. One thing that IBM does do very well is give feedback and reviews on your time at the company. You can look back on this feedback for areas of improvement. ACE (the IBM feedback tool) is easy to use at and means that you can get great references to use later on in your career journey!

In terms of personal training, a lot of that is done through your learning platform which is available to all employees at IBM. On this platform, there are over 10,000 hours of learning that you can do. The amount of extra investment on top of this learning platform is little as it is your choice whether you do the extra learning or not. However, in April during my placement we did have a careers fair where you can learn about all the different options within IBM and the IBM onboarding is very good for setting you up for a successful placement year

The future prospects of the organisation are appealing to me due to the fact that I want to go into sales. In IBM the way that I see the graduate scheme is it the two main routes, which is either into consulting (which is the main pathway) or into sales (fewer roles in this area). There are other graduate roles within IBM but these are the two main areas.

There is a pretty good social scene within IBM. At Christmas, we had a boat party that was set up by the interns and due to the number of people that are interns at IBM there are always people who are willing to go out and Facebook groups that you can join. 

I lived at Home when on Placement. Socialising around Hursley the area that I worked in was good there are clubs and pubs in the area and easy access to Southampton by train for a big night out. Also, a great pub quiz in the area that I went with some of the other interns at IBM, which was a lot of fun Another bonus of Hursley is the fact that you don't have to pay for a gym membership as there is one on the IBM site