Finance Assistant Review

My placement was really enjoyable. The work was repetitive every month, but I believe that is the same for most finance roles. The people I worked with made it more enjoyable, it was a great team in a great office. The perks of the job were really good, including the car and financial bonus. The path from undergraduate to graduate is really poor however.

In my role, I had a huge amount of responsibility from day one. I was trusted by my team to get on with my monthly tasks as well as provide support in ad-hoc situations. I was called on for help with Excel issues fairly often, so the fact that I was an undergrad in no way meant that they didn’t appreciate my skill set or trust me to do a good job.

My manager was fantastic. She sat me down when I first started and helped me plan out realistic goals that would push me to do a great job. We then had regular catch ups, every 1-2 months or after intense working periods like year end, where we would assess each objective and my progress towards it and add new ones if necessary.

I was constantly busy – at no point was I sat twiddling my thumbs. I had a timetable of monthly tasks to complete and a constant stream of ad-hoc requests coming in, so there was always plenty to be getting on with. If I felt overwhelmed by the amount I had to do, my manager was more than happy to step in and help.

I was in no way micromanaged during my placement - I was responsible for managing several processes and was given access to confidential data, with the mutual understanding that I would ask for help if I needed it, communicate progress with stakeholders and take responsibility for any mistakes I made.

Most of the undergrads did 2 or 3 levels of Excel training, but I found that I learnt way more on the job than in these courses. There were also soft skills courses around things like increasing your commercial awareness, increasing your impact and influence on various stakeholders etc. The excel skills I learnt will really help in the final year of my degree, and the soft skills courses make you feel well prepared for applying for grad jobs.

My team was great – not too noisy that you couldn’t get on with a big piece of work if you needed to, but great for a chat and always willing to help out with any technical issues or car recommendations. If they couldn’t help you with a problem, they always knew someone that could, and no one came across as unapproachable at all.

This is where it could have been better. My friends at other companies had undergrad days out and joint undergrad projects which would have been great – at VWG we were pretty much confined to our own roles. The training sessions for just undergrads were a bit haphazard and I felt they came too late on in the year. We were assigned graduate ‘buddies’ but only once we’d been there 4 or 5 months which was a bit pointless.

I feel like I have already answered this question.

There was no guaranteed graduate role – the best you could get was a spot on an assessment centre and only a handful of people were given this, after going through a longer process than external graduate candidates, which just seemed pointless after the amount the company had invested in us. I couldn’t understand why you’d train up 40 undergraduates for a year, get them to a stage where they knew the business and industry really well and then not look at them as the ideal candidates for the graduate scheme? It was so bizarre, I didn’t even bother applying.

Since there were 40 of us, we tended to go out in smaller groups and then once in a while have a bigger night out. Some of us would go out for meals or round each other’s houses quite a bit and had a couple of BBQs in the summer.

It was average. Far less than my friends in London were paying obviously, but much more expensive than cities in the north. It’s would be really difficult to get around without a car and Milton Keynes has so many roundabouts that you go through no end of petrol.

Milton Keynes doesn’t have the best nightlife since it’s not a student city at all, so most people ended up either going home or back to uni most weekends to go out. We went out in big groups a few times and people regularly went out for drinks with their teams.

The boys arranged 5 a side football most weeks and there were a few company teams you could join.