Business Intelligence Analyst Review

Overall I have really enjoyed my placement at Vauxhall and has been a great opportunity to experience working life while relating parts of my job back to my University Degree. I have been given a real job with important responsibilities across Europe and thanks to my manager and team constantly pushing me I have improved my professional and personal skills to a high level.

On starting the placement I felt very welcomed by everyone in the IT department and everyone around me was always happy to help with little things of where to get information or who to speak to. After settling into the role I felt like a valued employee with real responsibilities and treated with the same as full time employees.

At Vauxhall you are given support from a variety of people including your Department, your team, your line manager and an assigned mentor. These lines of contacted are there to be used as much (or as little) as you like ranging from one-to-one weekly meeting to a casual chat every now and then. I have personally found my Manager and direct team to be very supportive in what's best for me, offering guidance in areas I have been stuck on or found troublesome.

For my role as a Business Intelligence Analyst I found that my daily work load varied from week to week depending on what market analysis had to be completed for markets across Europe. Although I've always been busy with work and the analysis and knowledge gained in the job role has been in high demand.

With the help of my line manager and team I have been given a wide range of different responsibilities across IT and the business giving me a wide range of exposure to different areas. After gaining a knowledge base in IT and from a variety of projects I feel I have been given alot of responsibilities including knowledge transfer, reports, exploring new systems, giving demos to other areas in the business, my own analysis been used by a variety of different counties and Business leads Globally coming to me for advice on analytics.

As mentioned my manager was very understanding of me going back to University next year and asked me to highlight some key areas in modules to identify side projects i could get involved in while at work. GM also provides a range of compulsory training as well as a pool of extra training available to get the most out of the placement. This included Advanced Excel training, Business Analyst Training, Project management training and advanced analytics training.

The Office atmosphere in IT is very relaxed and everyone gets on.

The placement at Vauxhall has been very well organised, starting off with a 2 week handover period from the previous undergradate as a settling in period to helps ease you into the job role and company atmosphere. The 2 week handover also included housing support, presentations from all the departments, site tours, feedback meetings and all done while staying in a local University halls to help get to know some of the other undergraduates.

The company has a big learning portal in which you can take advantage of to further skills and training when you have time. My manager is always pushing me to do as much relevant training as possible including sending me to a conference in London about Project management and also paid for a company trip to Germany to share my knowledge and insights with the team in Germany.

The company keeps everyone from the placement on file for future reference and in previous years has offered jobs to people once they graduated.

There are 80 undergrades at working at Vauxhall as well as apprenticies.

The rent for Living in Luton for me was around £250 and was a standard price for the cost of living.

Due to the large undergraduate program there is a nightlife around the area but I would suggest after a while looking further than Luton for a nightout...London, St albans, Watford

There are a variety of different sports teams and events at Vauxhall including Rugby, multiple weekly football teams, rowing, cycling events.