Finance Placement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my year in placement. I had my doubts over applying and considering doing a placement year but now I can reflect on the previous year and I couldn't recommend it enough, It is a great opportunity to showcase what you have learnt in University and apply it to working conditions. It was invaluable to pick up career experience and to gain confidence. I feel i am now in a much stronger position to head into my final year of University.

From the moment I stepped into Virgin Media I felt like a valued member of the family. Although it took me a while to find my feet, like most placement students did as it was our first taste of working life,I never felt like I was letting my team down or not pulling my weight. By the time it came to the end of my placement year, the work I was producing was valued at a Graduate level and I was also asked to extend my contract for a further couple of weeks to allow me to give a handover to a new full time worker in the time and carry out training sessions on applications I had mastered.

Support and guidance was always there when I needed it at Virgin. I had weekly 121s to discuss my weekly objectives and things that I wanted to achieve and it was also an opportunity to talk about my longer term aspirations and goals that I wanted to complete while working at Virgin. Everyone who worked at Virgin always had a spare 15 minutes to talk about an issues or problems that you may have had, it was always reassuring that help was always available.

Working in a finance role meant that I was busy every day all year. The pressure and working hours went up and down depending when Budgets were being produced or when monthly business meetings were taking placed or Long Range Plans were taking place. I also worked in a team that was by no means perfect, this meant that when less work was available, I was always able to find a process or work on something that needed improving or modernising to keep our reporting up to date.

The level of responsibility very much varied as you got accustomed and used to the role. At the start I was producing very routine and basic finance reporting jobs such as collating weekly Powerpoints and updates. As the placement went on you, you got to decide the amount of responsibility to took on. It was up-to you to seek out work and opportunities that you could get involved in and help on. Depending on what responsibility or pressure you wanted to take on, there was always opportunities available.

The skills and knowledge that I have learnt during my placement year will not only help me perform to a higher level during my final year of university but they will help me for the rest of my career. I have gained such confidence and understanding of the working world that I feel I am in a much better place than students who may not have taken on a placement year. I am hoping that things I have learnt will enable me to understand and grasp work quicker next year.

Working for Virgin Media was great. As I have heard of all of the Virgin companies, working for Virgin Media was an absolute pleasure. You could feel how proud and excited everyone was to work for a company like Virgin and that rubbed off in the office. Everyone was willing to help and always had time to spare for a catch up to talk about problems you may be facing, or how to achieve certain things or to even pick their brains about a topic you were interested in. It was such a nice environment to work in as it wasn't corporate, more relaxed and friendly yet everyone was passionate and dedicated to their work.

The overall placement I felt could have been organised better. We had 4 quarterly meeting which gave fellow placements students to meet up for a day or training and talks from people inside Virgin Media. As a lot of the placement students working in various offices around the country I thought that there could have been more opportunities provided to meet up with fellow placement students. As so the running of the days, I thought the training could have been catered more around what us placement students wanted to learn, rather than generic learning sessions. Other than that however the placement team were very friendly and were always there for support if you needed them.

At Virgin they have a massive database and programme entirely dedicating to giving their employees training and development called Ignite which I found very impressive. There was always courses or Power-points that you could look at and learn about a certain topic or skills that you may want to learn. I attended a variety of training sessions through the year to learn more about Virgin Media Business and the products that they sold. All training sessions were enjoyable and very informative, the training and development team at Virgin do a great job at keeping the sessions fun and informative.

Since Virgin Media is currently working on a £3 billion investment from Liberty Global, trying to become the market leader in broadband, there has never been a more exciting or challenging time to work for Virgin Media. With that kind of investment the company is expected to achieve big goals and become a real contender in the British Broadband market, making future employments prospects very interesting and exciting.

Overall there were 25 placement students working for Virgin Media and around 15 students placed at the main office in Hook. This meant that for these students all living closely in Reading that they were lots of social activities and events happening. As a placement year as a group there were very few times were we got the opportunity to meet up outside or work or in work. This is what I would have been liked to have been better at Virgin. The social side is very much up to the placement students.

The cost of living was reasonably expensive for me. This may be due to the fact we lived in Reading, a town located down South near London which of course means higher house prices as compared to the North which is where I live and attend University. The same goes to the socialising, things in the South to tend to be more costly but as I was earning a wage at Virgin as was less bothered by these factors.

I worked in the main office of Virgin Media which was located in Hook,a very small town that did not offer much other than a train station and a business park. This meant that there were only a few local pubs around for a drink afterword which I found rather disappointing. Due to the lack of the social scenes around the office I found it rare that teams would go out for a drink after work or socialise together which I would have liked to have happened more frequently, but unfortunately for people it involved sorting travel arrangements to the nearest Town Reading.

I wouldn't say there were any opportunities to get involved in, I can't think of any or say that I did. Any activities that i did participate in would have either been organised by me or people of placement. There was no centre of outside activities which was disappointing, that is something Virgin could definitely improve on.