Business Placement Review

iI really enjoyed my time at PwC. I felt like I was treated the same as a graduate would be (minus the nice salary!) and there was never any differentiation between me and the other graduates. The only way someone could tell I was a Business Placement is when they saw my job title in the emails I sent.

My colleagues definitely valued my input on the range of projects I was working on. I was given a lot of responsibility in the team and this allowed me to take my own direction with some projects and really contribute something meaningful. A lot of my colleagues would even look up to me and ask me programming questions.

PwC has a people management system. Everyone is assigned a people manager (even Business Placements) and you have regular meetings with them. They ask about your performance, help set objectives and generally are there to help with anything you need. They are also the people that will fight for you to get promoted, so I recommend getting to know them!

I was very busy for the majority of my time during placement. I would be lying if I didn't say that there was a period of downtime between January and March where there was hardly any chargeable work. I spent most of my time on youtube etc during those months. I think this was across the whole business, though.

I was definitely given a lot of responsibility and really was allowed to shine. Myself and another Business Placement student actually developed a whole new innovative tool for our business unit, leading to them winning a lot of work out of this. That being said it could vary across different business units but this is the experience I had.

Coming from a Computer Science background, the work that I was doing was mildly challenging at best. I would rather have worked on more challenging programming projects. I don't know if PwC really has that type of work available though, maybe we have to make the case for it.

It was generally a very good atmosphere, not too formal and not too casual. There was a good level of banter between me and my team and the manager was really lovely and looked after us well. Everyone looked out for each other and if I ever had any queries they were there to help me.

It was definitely a very structured programme with an induction, student recruitment contact throughout and also quarterly peer meetings with other Business Placements. There is also a project at the end of the placement where you present to a panel of senior members of PwC NI (I had a Partner, Director, Manager and member of student recruitment on my panel).

There wasn't much in terms of personal development and training, there were some away days which focused on team bonding, collaboration and working together. However, there was no individual development for the Business Placement, besides the people managers. I know graduates got to go to Latimer, maybe a similar programme for placements would work well.

As of writing this review I have not been informed whether or not I will receive a graduate offer. I am hopeful that I will. In terms of progression etc this varies depending on the Business Unit you join. I know that this is definitely a worrying aspect of me returning to the firm as my Business Unit is quite top-heavy.

We tried to regularly meet up for drinks/pizza/christmas market/nights out etc. There was definitely effort put in. More could have been done by PwC to facilitate this though, perhaps subsidizing the nights out somewhat (free pizza anyone?) or organising a leaving dinner for outgoing placements.

Belfast is very cheap to live in and the wage received was more than enough to live very comfortably.

Lots of clubs and pubs around the area. I would definitely recommend Belfast in that regard.

There were societies such as the GLEE society and a lot of charity work going on. I didn't personally get involved with the charity work but I know that a lot of people did and seemed to enjoy it. I mainly helped out with the GLEE (Gay, Lesbian and Everyone Else) society and attended most of their events, which were very well attended and informative.