Channel Analyst Review

Highly enjoyed my placement, offered much more than I expected and I think it has given me a great foundation for finding a future career.

Felt very highly valued, the work I did was always important but occasionally I'd find myself even doing crucial work for high level management. The feedback from these managers and colleagues confirmed it and I felt part of the team throughout the year.

My manager would have meetings with myself to see how I was doing and to understand what I wanted to get out of my time at HPE. As my manager was often out of the office and travelling for business I had a informal mentor who I worked with closely everyday, this was great and she helped hugely by telling me what I was doing well and things I could improve on. I was also assigned a graduate mentor which was great as this gave an insight to someone who was in the next step of their career, allowing me to ask any questions I had about a potential future graduate role.

To start with everything was quite slow and occasionally I'd have to look for some extra work or ask if I could help my colleagues out in any other way but as I settled into the role and met more people my workload increased.

Like the workload this increased over the course of the year, halfway through my placement I was solely responsible for running a discount process whilst the previous employee's replacement was found. This responsibility was tough and added pressure but I learnt so much from it.

Believe I've learnt far more this year than in my previous years at university and hope it will make my final year more straightforward. I also think the skills I've learnt and the experiences I've had will be a major benefit when applying for jobs post university.

Really positive, open office so could ask questions or speak to anyone at any level.

I was really impressed with the organisation involved and how seamless the transition was. HPE have a great handover process where the last month of the previous interns placement year is spent teaching the new intern their role and helping them settle in.

A lot of time was invested and the training opportunities were endless, was completely down to yourself as to how much training you'd like to do and in what area.

The employment prospects are extremely appealing, given my time on placement and the personnel I've met I believe this will give me a good chance when potentially applying back as a graduate in 12 months time.

This year we have had roughly 80 interns in our office. This huge number means there is always something going on, for instance we've had a football team running all year and most of the interns live together - just like university.

Given the southern location it's expensive but it's not outrageous.

With almost all the interns living in Reading the nightlife was pretty good, having London nearby on the train meant there were quite a lot of options.

Loads of opportunities from various different sports to endless charity opportunities - even entitled to taking a select amount of days off per month to carry out charity work/events.