Commercial Analyst Review

A year-long internship with BP was a fantastic experience. It allowed me to improve my business skill-set, create a network of contacts and helped me decide on my future career path after university. I was given real work and tasks to perform and never felt I was viewed as just an intern. Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

During my year I was welcomed whole heartedly into both the commercial team where I worked and into the graduate community at Hull. The work I produced for the team I felt was received warmly and valued equal to any full time employee. For certain areas a number of my reports and comments were passed up to certain managers and leaders and helped inform decisions and strategy.

I had two line managers during my time at BP and my work was split on a 50:50 basis between them. Both in their own ways were fantastic, giving me the required guidance and advice but also allowing me to pursue my own ideas of how a project or report should be done. Each helped me with furthering my learning, growing my networking skills and improving my business skill set.

Throughout the year there were busy and quiet times, normally fluctuating in a cycle. Usually at the start of each month for the first 10 days and the end of each quarter were relatively busy, as I had to produce various reports and sort out invoices around these times. During quieter periods I took the opportunity to work on one of the models I built, learning Excel and doing independent research into related areas of interest.

At the start of my placement most of my work was checked over by supervisors and line managers. As I grew into the role, understanding it more, I was given more and more responsibility. For the second half of my placement, I was given lots of responsibility. I was in charge of a number of reports/analyses that went out to senior figures with no oversite and was in charge of invoicing customers, where large sums of money were being paid.

Very few of the skills developed during my year will assist in my studies doing Chemistry, however they will be enormously beneficial at future jobs within a business environment. Excel, analytical, networking and communicating skills were all vastly improved during my year. I received very little formal training apart from a presentation workshop which was very useful.

The atmosphere in the office was very relaxed. People were very happy for you to go around and talk to them and chat to others at different desks. Clothing attire was relaxed formal in the sense of Chino's/ suit trousers and a shirt with no tie. There was also a separate area to go an relax/ play table football for socialising with colleagues

Overall the entire internship was very well organised. BP's HR department who deal with the interns helped us all the way through. They were in contact with us from before we started though to the end. There were regular catch up calls and we were free to contact them at any time. At no point in time did I feel lost or just left to get on with it.

For structured training and development I only received a couple training sessions. Both were at the very start with one on how you learn best and the second on how to present. Apart from that there were helpful lunch and learns where you learnt about what others are doing across the business. In addition my line managers invested a lot of time developing me and teaching various aspects of the business.

Future employment is very appealing with BP if I receive a job offer from them.

At Hull there was a very friendly and open group of around 20-30 graduates most of whom were engineers (either Meng or Ceng). With a group of them we would often go out on weekend trips to nearby city’s/attractions, cinema trips, football/rugby matches and also on nights out. All four of us as interns at Hull felt immediately included and welcomed into the group.

Living and socialising in Hull is very cheap! On the BP intern salary you can expect to save a fair amount of cash for travelling or final years of university.

The night life was interesting and different to many other citys. It was very cheap and with a good group of people it was ok.

Yes there were a number of activities you could get involved in. There were weekly sports activities such as 6 aside football, badminton, rugby and go karting. There was also a number of opportunity’s as an intern to volunteer with BP within the local community, helping to organise charity days in the local area and helping out at the Charites after work/ on weekends.