Work Experience Week 2016 (Belfast) Review

Although I definitely suffered an information overload with the first day being so jam packed with talks about what the company did, I had a wonderful time and really enjoyed it!

I personally felt very valued because do many employees took the time extra after talks to speak with me one on one, they told me how they thought it was incredibly important to get the best new talent into the company and that we were that talent they valued.

During our technology based project (creating a system that displayed NASDAQ stock data from a database as a chart on a web page) we received as much help as we needed. We were given the personal numbers if members of staff we could call for help from any time, and we utilised this feature when we needed guidance. They made us feel comfortable asking for guidance.

I learning a incredible amount about the company, learned technical programming skills and teamwork skills from our project and gained interview skills from mock interviews. The experience was invaluable and I felt comfortable the whole time.

It was very well planned and scheduled, so that we were busy all day every day with talks, tours and project work. It was very well planned.

It was a very friendly atmosphere. All the employees joked with us, answered all our questions with genuinely helpful answers and we didn't feel like we were intruding or being a burden. The atmosphere was fun, it seemed all the employees were very friendly with each other and everyone cared that everyone was advancing without problems, anyone who needed help got it without any problems or complaints. It was a big family, to be cliched!

As our experience week was short we were not paid, but we did receive free lunch every day, free notebooks/pens etc. and the winning team for our technology challenge each received a price of a Samsung Galaxy tablet so it felt like they invested more than I ever expected in us, especially with them getting little immediate benefit from our work experience, we received the most benefit so it felt like they really cared.

I heard review's from many employees in many different areas including testing, operations, support, compliance etc. Getting so many different honest opinions from so many parts of the company, both things they liked and didn't, gave me a really good insight. Some of the employees were more honest than others, and though they had some more negative aspects I actually valued these reviews more than the entirely positive ones!

While the company did give an awful lot of talks, especially the first day, and we were talked to by most areas of the company still feel a bit confused. Though I do have a much better understanding than before I went into the company. The information that we were giving was a lot, they definitely provided as much as was possible in the short amount of time we had to learn about the company.

I still don't know what I want to do as a career overall, however I definitely would consider a career in banking technology. I spoke to enough technology employees to know that the roles and varied and interesting, and that finance actually is a career path that isn't as boring or dull as I originally thought. It is still programming and doing the things I love to do with technology, the purpose of that technology doesn't make it boring like I thought.

I was bit paid or reimbursed, however as a short work experience week the free lunch and competition for prizes was more than adequate.

Definitely! I met people from compliance, operations, and within technology I video conferenced and spoke to the head of technology, testing, support etc. So I had ample opportunity

They had networking events with employees and with current placement students in from university, so I got to meet so many people!

Yes. We had a talk on the social committee. The woman told us about all the social events organised monthly at citi and all the club's they ran like touch rugby, photography etc.

Yes. The first day was very tiring with information overload, but the meeting employees, getting interview advice, CV feedback and the group project were extremely invaluable!