Project Management Specialist Review

I felt that once the preliminary weeks work were finished, a consistent workload was hard to come by. This led to a lot of downtime and any tasks I requested were unfulfilling and lasted a couple of days at best until it was complete and I found myself in the same situation as before.

Being the sole and final intake at my location, it was very difficult to integrate with other placement students in a working environment as most viable friendship groups had already been established for at least a month prior to my arrival. My work managers gave me some very fulfilling work early on and this helped me establish myself to my team, However, as the year went on, I slowly began to feel more comfortable with approaching my peers through various initiatives in and out of work and so have become much closer with a number of other placement students, particularly my team members

Both in terms of work load and my personal development, I feel as if more could have been done to give me guidance, particularly in the initial stages of a new project, for example. In terms of work, IBM has a near-innate ability to form completely meaningless acronyms of every possible system/process/geo/anything. While they're very easy to remember, I doubt if many people actually know what they stand for or if they do, it isn't really relayed in an easy to understand manner. In terms of personal development, while there are plenty of opportunities to explore a variety of business lines in IBM, I feel more could be done to get students talking to the right people to find explore these various opportunities.

Far too many days have been spent twiddling my thumbs. Perfect balance in the first 3 months, everything after that has been quiet. If there weren't opportunities available through IBM Giveback, I don't think I would've had a full days work for approximately 4 months.

In my early tasks, I was given a lot of responsibility as it was work that I was already very competent at with skills I had developed in the years prior to my placement. However, once it was work I had not experienced before, it was difficult to get the appropriate education needed, let alone for me to become familiar enough with the process to be given a level of responsibility on it.

Despite the workload and it's quality being less than satisfying, I feel that I have grown and developed as a person and have much more of a desire to be proactive in the work I undertake. My social skills have increased immeasurably and have finally had the taste of the working world I'd been after for years!

Very relaxed atmosphere. Sometimes very quiet, sometimes overly noisy but always good company.

In terms of workload, I feel this was very poorly organised. However, the scheme itself and the various activities to get involved in as a Foundation student were fantastic i.e Giveback

We've had a variety of 'Employability Skills' modules throughout the year and the UP2Grad workshops allowed us to explore different roles in the company for the Grad Scheme based on activities and seminars.

If I was offered the same role, I wouldn't take it. However, the Grad scheme seems far more promising with what it has to offer in terms of quality of work.

I'll try to remain as impartial as possible due to my late start time in comparison to others. There is a large student community within IBM and we've made many opportunities for us to get to know each other and have plenty of social time together. All the students sit together at lunch and there are plenty of nights out and sports teams to get involved in outside of work.

Living was quite reasonable for our wage and there were plenty of tourist attractions which, although may seem expensive for only one day, are reusable throughout the year at no extra cost. There are also plenty of cheap bars around the place.

As much as I'm not into the clubbing scene, there are a plethora of bars and clubs around Portsmouth. Neighbouring Southampton also has a very good club and gig scene.

Sports clubs or nights out were pretty well the only offerings.