HR intern Review

My role is to assist the HRBD team with new aquisitions, divestitures and outsourcing deals. On a day to day basis I must check and respond to the team's email, co-ordinate meetings, take meeting minutes for consultations and track deal progress using excel spreadsheets. My main responsibility is to help with the onboarding of employees from aquisitions using the softwares Kenexa and Workday. I help the transition manager to ensure they have a smooth process when joining IBM.

I have developed my excel skills, and now feel confident navigating and using excel on a daily basis. At the start of my placement year I had very limited experience with excel, and I now feel confident that I can use all the important functions with no help needed. I have also learnt how to take efficient and comprehensive meeting minutes with large groups of employees, both during in person meetings and in online meetings too.

For the first 6 months of my placement I was not given much responsibility, only small daily tasks such as sending emails as requested by my manager, but as the placement went on I had the opportunity to gain more responsibility. I had the opportunity to help lead the onboarding for an aquisition, which meant I was in charge of the employee's onboarding process. This gave me the chance to put the skills learnt on my placement into practice and develop my confidence.

I recieved a lot of support and guidance on my placement, especially from my task manager who was always available on slack or webex to answer all my questions, no matter how small. As a team we always had weekly meetings to chat and ask for help on work related issues where we were feeling stuck, which was very useful. I also had a foundation manager who was always there to make sure I was coping okay, and talk to about any wellbeing issues.

The company culture was very inclusive and I always felt very welcomed by all the employees, no matter what age or ethnicity. We had opportunities to work in global teams and network with people from all areas of the business. My team had a very informal, welcoming feel, always chatting about our daily lives and hobbies as well as the work. Within the HR team we also had monthly social calls where we had the chance to play games virtually and bond with other members of the UK HR society, which helped build a friendly and open culture.

I enjoyed working in my team, as everyone was very friendly and fun to work with, however I did not enjoy the work itself. I often felt the tasks were rather boring and repetitive - for example data pulling employee's data off Workday and imputting it into an excel spreadsheet. Most tasks felt as if there must be software that could do it for me, rather than me spend my time on it! It was a very admin based role, which did not satisfy my creative side.

No

The initial pre-employment assessments are very important when getting through to the next stages when applying to IBM. On the assessment centres it is crucial that you speak up enough to get your personality seen and noticed in a positive way, by the managers watching the assessment days. Make sure that you contribute positively and get your points accross, as the managers choose which interns they want to interview for their roles based on the assessment centre days.