Placement Analyst Review

I really did enjoy my placement. I was a bit apprehensive at the start about what to expect, as I had never worked in such a large organisation before and never used my IT skills as part of my job. However, once I joined I was welcomed by friendly faces and every day I learnt new skills and was given new opportunities. I would definitely say I'm sad to leave my placement, and will miss the new friends I've made but will take back all the skills and knowledge I have learnt to University and my future career path.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. During my placement, I was given many opportunities to display my work to other colleagues, including senior management. I was given opportunities to do demo's to others teams explaining how I had completed my projects and how they could start to do the same for their team. Because of this, I felt very valued that my team/manager took pride in my work and had the confidence in me to allow me to explain it to many others within the company. I also felt very valued as I received multiple compliments from colleagues and senior management regarding my work, motivating me to keep it up and continue to impress others within the company. I was also given many opportunities to get involved on important projects, and was not left to sit back just because I was a placement student.

During my placement, for the first 6 months I was placed in a different team than the last 6 months. However, both of my managers and team members in both teams were extremely helpful and always took time out of their busy days to answer my questions or to help me figure an issue or problem. They also gave me the appropriate training for the applications that I was using, which most were completely new to me and internal to Citi. I would say that the support and guidance given from my management/supervisors was second to none and they really helped me find my feet within the company.

It really depends on the day, as things are different every day. Some days it could be extremely busy and it seems as if there is so much to get done. Other days could be quite slow as you wait for someone to get back to you before you can begin working properly etc. I would say that most days I was a good level of busy. I worked on project work and thus never really had to complete work within a short time-frame. However, something can always pop up that needs done within the hour or day. It just is a matter of learning how to manage your time effectively so that you're not constantly busy every day or constantly bored every day.

I was given a good amount of responsibility during my placement. I was allowed to work on applications that are very important within Production Support, dealing with live trades. I was also responsible for the stability of projects, ensuring that they were completed effectively and provided teams with the saves we wanted. I enjoyed having responsibility within my work, as it motivated me to really try and do well, as I knew it was important to the team and the overall organisation that this work was done correctly. I think that especially within a bank, when you are dealing with finances, any work you are given is going to come with a substantial amount of responsibility, which you need to ensure you are experienced enough to deal with.

I believe that during my placement I have learnt new and developed old skills that will help me in my final year for University and for my future career. I believe my self-management and development skills have improved a substantial amount. Being on placement has taught me how to manage my responsibilities, and how these responsibilities are all important. Working on a routine has increased my self-management skills by allowing me to understand the importance of time management, getting to work on time, and completing deadlines in time. I would be confident in saying I know how to communicate clearly with others, which has definitely improved since I have been on placement. I have been able to build up my communication skills every day in work, through discussing daily tasks with my team, to speaking to other colleagues around the world. Throughout placement, I have been given some opportunities to increase my communication skills. I gave multiple demonstrations of my work to senior management, along with presentations to other colleagues. I have also been involved with multiple University talks and days, meeting current students looking for placement and also students who are deciding what to do for A Level, and talking them through the application process for Citi, and how working in ICT has benefited me. Each of these opportunities has allowed me to improve my communication skills along with building my confidence in speaking about how I’ve progressed since being on placement. I would say that since being on placement, my problem solving skills have increased tenfold. I would use my problem solving skills nearly every day in work. For example, during scripting and programming, I would use my problem solving skills whenever I ran into an error, or something didn’t work as it should have. I used these skills to understand the issue, and to try to work out what the problem was. Once this was done, I used my skills further to fix the problem or implement new data. In Production Support, many things can go wrong, and it is our job to fix it. Through doing this, I was able to build up my problem solving skills and learnt how to deal with certain problems appropriately.

Everyone in my office works really hard, and most seem really busy. However, there is always time to relax and have a 15 minute break and chat with your team members or colleagues. I would describe Citi as being quite relaxed in the office, and not too strict, which is really good. You can take a quick break and head up to the canteen for a cup of tea and a chat, then get back to work after feeling refreshed. Also, everyone within the office is approachable, willing to help and listen to what you have to ask.

I would say the work placement was organised quite well. We were all placed within our teams from the 3rd day. However, we didn't actually find out what roles we would be in or area of work that we would be in until the day before we began in that role. I think it would have been better if we knew what area of work we were going to be in (production support/development/QA etc) before we started, so that we could prepare ourselves. On the other hand, I believe the placement was organised well as we all seemed to settle into our placements fairly quickly and for the first few days we took part in icebreaker challenges so that we could get to know the other placement students and we attended various talks and presentations from different management levels within Citi. We also had meeting throughout our placements with the Placement Coordinator from HR, where we discussed projects we had been working on and expressed any worries or struggles we had at the time.

During my placement, I worked on project work and didn't take part in BAU work day-to-day. However, I still received appropriate training on the applications and services I was using. For 6 months I was working with software called Geneos ITRS, and I was given a weeks training course for this with an exam at the end, which I can now use on my CV as certificates gained and training completed. Within Citi, there are a vast amount of training courses that there is a budget for, so you can always request taking a course, in a development language, for example.

I know that Citi have an amazing graduate scheme, complete with weeks of training. I would say that this is something I would definitely be interested in. Now that I have the experience of working with them for a year, I would love to apply what I have learnt to another team within the organisation, if I was to come back.

Myself and some of the other placement students were very sociable, and met each other for lunch nearly every day. There are not that many events organised by Citi themselves for the placement students. However, we all ensured that we organised nights out/lunches so that we could all keep in contact and find out how everyone was doing,

I lived in the student area, around Queen's University, with some of my friends during my time on placement. I would say the rent here is normal for any student house, around £230 a month. Socializing prices are reasonable, especially on weeknights when drinks are much cheaper than the weekends.

The nightlife in Belfast is very good. There are many pubs and clubs to choose from, most being in the City Centre, and some near Queen's University area.

There was many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. For example, I took part in 'Coder Dojo' which is a coding class for kids in school. I went out on a Saturday morning to Belfast Met and helped kids during their coding classes as a demonstrator and supervisor. There are many other opportunities within Citi. For example, sporting clubs and social clubs which organised events such as cocktail making classes/archery etc.