Finance Analyst Review

I enjoyed the experience, and thought it was a valuable one. Xerox has a large amount of placement students, and therefore there is a good student community.

I feel with the importnace of the roles that I was given throughout the year, that I was valued as a tema member and trusted to complete important tasks.

I had three managers over he course of the year, with differing amounts of guidance, but overall the amount of suport that I received from them was good, which helped with my development.

The roles was cyclical over the month, with most of my work coming at month end, so there were some quiet times during the middle of the month, however there was a certain amount of ad hoc work to keep me going. Overall though it balanced out, and i got busier throughout the year.

I was given alot of responsibilty throughout the year, but this grew from the start and I took on more roles and was assigned more important tasks.

I think I developed alot of skills over the year, both specific to my job/course, but also in general, and how to deal with a working environment. My It and especially excel skills have improved greatly and I feel more confident returning to my final year of uni with this experience.

My office was generaly a good environment, but as I sat near hotdesks which sales people only occupied around month end, sometimes it could be quite quiet and a little dull, but it was still friendly.

I took up a placement role that had been running for many years, so the role was established within the team and the company with specific roles and an adequate workload.

The company has its own online education centre to run courses to improve working and job specific skills, we were also encouraged to complete the 'lean six sigma' working ethics and process education. We were also taken out on numerous trips as a team and finance as a department.

Xerox have a lot of current employees who started as placement students which suggest that the opppurtunity to return here is high. However while I have been here that have been 'streamlining' and numerous redundancies within finance and other departments, which suggests it could be harder to return here in the future. I have registered my interest for jobs that come up after my graduation.

There was a large amount of students on placement at Xerox, so there were regular events arranged and a good student community. Also with the option to live in Brunel University halls ath the start of the year in order to find housemates before renting in the area, the experience felt like a good taster of working life, with some social perks similar to uni.

The rent costs were higher than I experienced at uni, but I was in greater London as opposed to university in Bournemouth. The costs of socialising were quite standard.

There were'nt many options for a night out in Uxbridge itself, but the Student reps organised trips in to central London (which were quite expensive) and there was also a club that was closer where free mini buses were arranged and it was alot cheaper.

Being in finance I didn't really get the opportunity to visit many events or places compared to someone in a marketing role for example. However there were numerous trips arranged by my team and the finance department trhoughout the year. There was talk of me being able to visit a partner and disributor of Xerox products to futher understand the business, but this never materialised although this was mostly down to a change of manager.