UKI Events Enablement Specialist Review

I did enjoy my work placement. It was hard at the beginning to get to grips with everything. However after a few months I felt a lot more settled and began to enjoy the job a lot more.

Most of my colleagues were very supportive. They would always recognise the hard work that I did and acknowledge me for this. This made me feel valued and part of a team.

At times it was difficult to get support from my team, due to most of them working from home and being hard to contact. However when I managed to get hold of people they were always very helpful and gave me all the help that I needed.

It varied. Some days I was very busy and felt overwhelmed with the workload. However, these days were rare and only really occurred around the time of the events we were running. Other days were quite relaxed. In general it was a nice balance as there was always stuff to be getting on with so I did not get bored.

I was given lots of responsibility over the year. Towards the end of placement I was managing whole events almost by myself. It was great to be trusted with this type of task. It was nice to be able to own tasks and get fully involved in things.

I learned lots of valuable skills over the year that I will carry with me for life. These were mostly soft skills, such as professional conduct, confidence and presentation skills.

The office was usually quite quiet. During the summer period there was barely anyone in the office, which was sometimes a bit demotivating. However there were days when my whole team was in the office which was great as it enabled us to get everything done. My area of the office was largely made up of interns, which gave it a good lively atmosphere.

The placement was extremely well organised. The company is very used to having interns and therefore was able to manage them well. The allocation of EPM's to each intern was very helpful and the support they gave throughout the year was great.

There was a lot of training available, but it was down to the individual to take part in this training. We were not forced to do any sort of training, which was good as it made us more independent and we were able to pick and choose what training we wanted. In terms of development, I am not sure the company invests much into interns that I can see. As they have so many I think it is hard for them to invest in every single one.

I am not going to apply for a job with IBM in the future, purely because there are so many other options out there. It is a great company and I have loved working for them, but I would rather try out some other companies in the future.

There was a great social scene among all of the interns. There were 150 interns in the London office so there was a lot of social events organised. These events were organised externally from IBM. I have definitely made friends for life on my placement year.

I lived in central London, so obviously it was very expensive. However this did not detract from the year. I knew it was going to be expensive in London so this did not put me off. I don't think the cost of living should deter anyone, as it is such a good location and a lot of fun.

The nightlife was great, as I was based in central London. There was always so much going on so you could never get bored!

There were a lot of opportunities to get involved with. These events were widely published, however you had to apply for them yourself. If you made the effort you could get involved in a lot of things.