IT Business Analyst Review

I absolutely loved my placement. It provided me with lots of challenging work and encouraged me to broaden my horizon. Each day would bring new challenges and I had to learn the best way to deal with these. The organisation has a good structure for the placement students as well which I thought was excellent.

My colleagues would not refer to me as a student but a member of the team. They are understanding and know you are learning and are always happy to answer questions.

My supervisor provided with a lot of one to one support and taught me a lot about the business. I would interact regularly with my manager as well especially to check on my progress and listen to any concerns I might have.

At the time of my placement I was very busy as we were undertaking a huge project onsite. This was a fantastic opportunity and allowed me to work together with several different departments. However, if I felt I was getting swamped I could also speak to my supervisor to look to ease my workload.

I was given a lot of responsibility during my placement. I would look after several different systems as well as conducting audits for the business. It was never the same thing over and over and there was always a new challenge to tackle.

The skills I have developed are invaluable and I will take them forward into my future career. I have improved my communication, organisation and my technical skills via this placement. Also working in this company has really enabled me to link my academically theories to real life business practices

The atmosphere was relaxed and calm. It was open plan office and each department are in sections. This made it easier to communicate with other team members.

The placement was really well organised. When I arrived my supervisor already had tasks lined up for me to do.Also for my role I had designated responsibilities which I had to do. Then I would start working with other departments on other projects or tasks they needed.

I did some internal training such as excel training and even got the opportunity to go on a 2 day project management course. A lot of the training came from working on jobs rather than formal training which personally I preferred. But if you wanted to do some training you just had to ask.

Cummins has really good track record with rehiring placement students. Two of my team members were previous placement students and returned full time after their degree. In some departments they don't have graduate roles but if you have impressed they make every effort to accommodate.

At the site I was working (Cummins Daventry) there were around 40-50 Placement students ranging from different departments. We created a facebook page for all the placement students and it was a great platform to meet and introduce everyone. Also there are some opportunities to work with other placement students on projects. It was really good to make friends with the other placement students.

Where the I lived (Daventry) the cost of living was a bit high put a majority of people either commute from surrounding areas, most popular being Northampton or Rugby which are a bit cheaper. Daventry is a very nice place but quite small and not much variety so if you are looking for a bit more it may be best to try Northampton.

Honestly, I don't go out much in terms of clubbing and don't drink but a majority of people go to Northampton, Rugby, Leicester.

Absolutely. There are a lot of work organised events like go karting which was fantastic as well meals out, football matches and night outs. Also cummins has something called EEEC. This is where they assign a minimum of 4 hours for each employee to do some volunteer work. This could be work with school children on projects, help the elderly or help with local garden projects.