HR Partner Support Review

My role is a supportive role for the HR Partners. This involves completing regular excel and Cognos reports using employee data, around 4 reports per week, as well as adhoc requests from the HR Team and wider teams such as Payroll, Benefits and Immigration. Other tasks may be supporting griveance meeings, attending promotion boards, and organising weekly speakers for HR team calls.

I have learned both hard and soft skills during my placement. Hard skills include basic excel skills, as skills used to navigate internal systems such as Your Insights/ Cognos, Events & Classes, Slack Block Kit, and online applications such as Canva. Soft skills include improved public speaking wiht plenty of opportunities for presentations, confidence speaking to seniors, practicing work/ life balance, working within teams.

Yes. My role works with SPI and other employee data, which has to be handeled carefully. Also, I was immediately given the responsibility of organising internal speakers for weekly calls joined by attendees of 80+. On top of this, the reports I create are used by senior team members, including the HR Director and general manager. There are also lots of opportunities to lead projects and get involved with more outside of your day-to-day role.

There was lots of support available at the start, with my previous interns staying on another 3 months. Also, I worked in the same office as my Foundation Manager who regularly checked up on me, and my Task Manager was always happy to call to go through any troubles. Also the w3 page is excellent as there is always a blog or article for information you are looking for. Plus, AskHR is great.

In my office the company culture was friendly, however in Portsmouth there are not many interns so I regularly interacted with people older than myself. This was fine, however the culture was not one excpected of my age group. However, everyone is friendly and people of all seniority levels are approachable and happy to help where they can. That is one of my faveourite things about IBM.

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement. It was mixed with different kinds of work, some of which boring and others challenging, but I got a great feel for working in a alagre corporation. I was given lots of responsibility which felt exciting, and there was lots of opportunities to get involved with more such as Foundation communities, BRGs, or other giveback. Feedback was also a huge which was great to recieve but give too.

Yes

Make friends in different locations, and try to visit as many locations as possible. Join a community or multiple. Regularly reflect on the work you are doing and think if it reflects what you want to do in the future - and then manipulate the internship to fit what you want out of it. It is easy to slip into consulting or technonolgy, but this is not for everyone. Make the most of of the learning!