Technical Support Engineer Review

I found it quite fast paced and a high pressured environment which I struggled with at time. But so if you like that sort of thing you would thrive. I enjoyed understanding the product I was supporting as it is quite complex but once you know how it works you are able to provide effective support. Overall, it was enjoyable on the whole, but was quite stressful.

I felt valued by colleagues and I felt like I was important to my team. Of course there are other colleagues that you don't naturally gel with but on the whole people were friendly and polite and happy to help you.

I received a large amount of support from my manager and other experienced members of the team. Although it depends on the availability of your manager, My team were almost always in most of the time. However despite the numerous support networks put in place allow you a route to ask questions and get valuable answers for every sort of query.

Very busy most of the time as there is no set work. The tickets come in when they come in. I felt like I was almost overworked most of the time and had to ask for support often to help me solve customer issues.

I was given increasing amounts of responsibility, the more I proved that I could manage it. In my experience, they don't look at you as an intern but as almost a full Grad. They want to see how well you can do the little tasks before they give you the big things to do. There's no limit if you prove you are capable.

Immensely, the technical knowledge I have learned as well as the professional skills, personal skills and client knowledge I have gained may not necessarily help with degree studies but will help when finding work beyond my degree

More work orientated than social. Mostly silent for the whole day as many people worked from home often. It felt quite fast paced and high pressured and I could sense it from other workers. But during less stressful times, it was more relaxed.

The work placement was well organised, with a dedicated Foundation area of IBM to look after all graduates, interns and apprentices. This Foundation area ran special training and education sessions about IBM and ensured that we were all developing professionally throughout our year and getting what we wanted out of the year.

The company invested a lot of time and effort into each intern, providing endless education sessions and allowing interns (if they had spare capacity in their job) to attend education days and help at events not related to their job. For example, I helped run events for Analytics and Commerce clients of IBM and this helped me to learn so much about these areas.

Future employment prospects within IBM are great, with a number of graduate roles available for interns and a great graduate programme. However, unlike some companies, there is a rigorous process to be taken on from an intern to a grad role. This includes a final review presentation at the end of the year, a lengthy grad application and (for the majority of people) an internal assessment centre before finally reaching business interviews. But it is all worth it.

Fairly, if you gelled well with the other interns - it depends on the people but for my office there were about 10-15 people I saw most days who were close but some cliques inevitably formed which makes it harder for late starters to get integrated. Especially the first month if you are not outgoing or outspoken

The cost of living around the Bedfont office differed depending on where you lived. If you live in Feltham or Staines this can be very expensive, whereas areas such as Hounslow, Isleworth or Brentford are cheaper but not as nice. Personally, I would suggest living in Clapham as it is reasonably priced and a very good location. But as these are all around/in London, the cost of socialising anywhere is expensive.

There is no nightlife in Feltham or most of the surrounding areas, but the nightlife in Clapham and central London is great.

Plenty, there were all sorts of societies and sports clubs going on which you could get involved with, furthermore there were a vast selection of charity events you could get involved with, there quite literally was something on offer for any sort of person! Personally, I got involved in charity football tournaments, plenty of talks on various new exciting pieces of technology; dinners and various parties (Xmas, Summer, etc)