Sales and Account Management Placement Review

I thoroughly enjoyed working on my placement for a number of reasons. I learned a lot of the basics about working in a large company as well as learning more about my role in sales and the technological solutions Atos offers. On the whole, my colleagues were friendly and helpful, making me feel welcome. One thing that was frustrating was that there was a lack of training available for placement staff. This meant it was very difficult to contribute in discussions, particularly when I first joined, as I had limited knowledge of the technological solutions available.

I felt valued by my colleagues, particularly those at a similar level to me within the company as we had built up strong relationships and would often help each other with different tasks and projects. My managers were also very encouraging and helpful, each helping me and challenging me. Some employees within the company were less helpful. I sometimes felt like an inconvenience and a drain on their time, however, this was a minority of the staff.

Initially, I was given a lot of support. I had a mentor and a buddy who I could talk to if I needed and I had a manager I was working very closely with, therefore I could ask him questions whenever I needed. They were more than happy to help. I was able to contact my managers quite easily throughout the process for support, although this was more difficult when they were busy. Unfortunately, there was not a great deal of training available for placement staff besides e-learning.

In a sales role, there are often peaks and troughs in activity. During a bid, the workload increases, however at other points, I did not feel that busy. I often felt bored at times. When I did I would ask for more work from various people across my network, and they would generally have something for me, however, it was often not that challenging. I believe part of the reason I did not always have a lot of work to do was because there was a lack of training for interns and so I could not be tasked with challenging pressing work.

I was given a fair amount of responsibility. On a few occasions I was involved in client interactions, however, because I did not have enough knowledge of the technical solutions we sell, I was not trusted enough to deal too much individually with clients. I would have enjoyed more client interaction, but understand why I was not able to have more at that stage.

I believe the time management and organizational skills developed will assist me in my degree and beyond. Having a more structured working day and working earlier and more efficiently is something that is easily transferrable to university life. Moreover, the sales skills and business acumen developed can be readily applied to my course as well as my future career.

The office environment was very friendly. Atos has a hot-desking system in place and there are no offices - it is open plan. This meant that there was a friendly culture as people were not cut off from their colleagues and people would often have chats with one another. Seeing as Atos employees are able to work from home if they have no reason to come in to the office, on certain days - Monday and Friday - the office was a little quieter. A large, open lunch area was a nice place to have a chat and was a great place to socialize.

The placement was not very well organized. The role I applied for was sales and account management, however, when I made the assessment centre, the recruitment team informed the candidates that this had been changed - some interns would be working in sales, some in marketing, some in account management, some in bids and some in innovation. They had not decided on this when they were actually advertising the job. When we arrived, there was no structure - we had to ask for a lot of work and our managers had to find things for us to do as they had not been made aware of us joining until very late.

The company did not invest much in interns for training and development. Although there are several e-learning courses available, there was no face-to-face training offered besides the induction course, which offered no training on the role. The company is reluctant to send interns on courses because of the high costs of these. You have to be a graduate or higher to do these.

Future employment prospects are appealing as the company invests heavily in you as a graduate. It is, on the whole, a great company to work for. There are lots of opportunities to develop and succeed. There is a lot of autonomy over what you get yourself involved in. The work is quite flexible and there are lots of opportunities to progress.

Yes there was, however, this was led by the interns and graduates. There were several other interns and grads around to socialize with and this immediately meant you had friends within the organization. However, it would have been good if Atos had organized more social events when we first joined the company to make meeting these people easier. We had several self-organized social events and also played together weekly in a football team.

The placement was in London, therefore the cost of living and socializing was very high. However, I commuted from outside of London which saved me a lot of money. Furthermore, although travel costs are high, as you can work from home a lot, a lot of money was saved on travel.

The nightlife was good as we worked in London. There are several bars and pubs to go to after work and lots of clubs around as well. This made it easier to socialize with friends and network as several employees went to the same bars, which enabled you to meet more people by going there.

The interns and grads played in a football team together on a weekly basis. Also, we organized a lot of social events outside of work, going out for a lot of drinks and going to clubs etc. However, these were all organized by grads and interns and not the company.