International PR/AR Intern Review

I did have a good experience this year at HPE but I feel that it was largely down to the team that I worked with rather than the practices that the company itself employed. I was unfortunate to join when HPE was going through massive organisational restructuring causing redundancies and a lot of job uncertainty. This led to the creation of quite an unhappy environment within the office. I did however feel that my experience within my role was not as affected by these changes as others. I was given a good level of responsibility, trusted to work autonomously when necessary and also offered many opportunities to enhance my development.

In my role I always felt I was fully integrated in the team activities and played crucial roles in delivering success as a department. Also, I did feel that my opinion was valued and that I was trusted to lead projects on my own.

Most of my team was off-site and worked from home so face to face meetings weren't a frequent thing. This made it difficult at times to assess where I was at and whether I was doing things correctly. I would have preferred more time on-site with the team. Although, saying this, my manager and supervisors were always more than willing to provide feedback if need be.

There were times at HPE where I would be working till late at night most days and then there were other occasions where I had very little to do. I would have liked to have a better balance when it came to managing business. I think having a team that was on-site would have definitely helped with this a lot more.

Towards the end of my placement I was trusted to run my own events and lead projects on behalf of my manager. I feel that I was given a perfect level of responsibility at each stage of my placement and as I progressed through the role.

I have been able to gain a lot of skills and knowledge from this year, helping guide me through decisions I make when I look at where I would like to take my career.

Due to organisational changes the atmosphere within the office became very negative towards the start of my placement but as I finish up I have seen that it is beginning to improve. I do however feel the office can be too quiet at times and needs a bit of livening up.

The whole of my placement process was well organised and I felt that my manager had a clearly defined role and set of expectations for me.

I don't feel that HPE particularly went out of the way to enhance my personal training and development. I feel that anything I learnt was through the tasks I performed as part of the role. I would have liked to have seen more opportunities at HPE to learn different things and gain understanding on different areas of the business.

I don't feel future employment prospects with HPE would be enticing for myself but that is more down to my personal tastes and career preferences. I would like to be in a more creative role and I find that at times corporate life can be bland because you have to work within the confines of strict brand guidelines.

At the beginning and end of the year more social events appear but there was nothing prolonged throughout the year.

We were mainly based in Bracknell so we socialised in Reading which was priced normally for the South of England.

Reading nightlife was okay there is a lot of variety however I lived at home on placement so it was harder for me to get there.

Not really - we had charity events every now and then but mainly no events were held outside of work.