EMEAI Sales Operations Intern Review

In my role you have high visibility so it is nice as an intern to interact with many different people over the phone and email. This role I think would be aimed at an individual who is more technical and enjoys working by themselves (someone more introverted). A good first step in your career and gives a good platform to build on.

The office is very welcoming and you do make a lot of friends. There are more interns so it is nice to talk to people in the same situation as you. Everyone is really friendly and supportive of all the interns that join Agilent. A lovely set of people. In terms of work, I think you do feel very valued people go out of their way a lot to make sure you are being told what a great job you do.

Manager is great, all managers at Agilent are really lovely and offer lots of guidance and support about your placement work from university, your actual work and your future after Agilent. There is a month of onboarding when the previous interns supervise and train the new intern, this is really useful because they were in the same position as yourself a year prior.

The work is very autonomous. At the start you can feel a bit overwhelmed with the workload as you really are thrown in the deep end but after that you really begin to have a good balance. The autonomy does allow you to rearrange your workload as you would like so it gives you a better balance. Our manager would step in and always review our work to make sure we were not too busy and push back to other people of necessary.

We had a lot of responsibility and were supporting a large section of the business on almost of the tools and reports. Our manager lets us get on with our work and doesn't really intervene unless we ask for help, that in turn allows us to be responsible for all our tasks. They were also real jobs and tasks that impacted the business.

I think I developed lots of skills through my placement. To list a few: I am much more confident in a business situation. I partook in all of the intern interviews for my replacements so this helped me understand what recruiters look for. I am now proficient in Excel. I think in the future this will really be applicable but with my degree specifically a placement definitely structures you in a great way to be able to make the most of your final year.

The atmosphere with the interns and some of the people in the office is great however I think in terms of the office itself it can get very quiet. I also find that the office space is sometimes very cold and dark with the lighting as it is so that can sometimes affect the office atmosphere.

I think that it is as well organised as it would be for a small company for example we would not have assessment centres and a programme to move around the company and learn because we are undertaking a full time job. I found some of the onboarding quite long and tedious but that is just getting through internal processes.

Training- there was the normal intern handover and some online internal trainings but there are no off the job trainings or anything similar. Development- I think again you do any company external development but the intern development for the work they let you get involved in is satisfactory. i.e. with the intern hiring and handover.

There aren't really many future employment prospects unless you use the network you have created and apply for open positions in other departments. It is the case that you should not as an intern leave Agilent thinking you will secure a job. There are not enough open positions for that, so you can apply to other parts of the business and the manager might put a good word in, but the rest is up to you.

There wasn't really much of a social scene. Some of the other interns like to plan nights out once in a while but you should not join Agilent expecting a great social scene. It really depends year to year on the other students, what they are like and where they are from.

It really depends on what you like to do. I think that living costs are fairly average and socialising costs are fairly low. It is very near to places like the Trafford centre and there is lots to do in Stockport so I have really enjoyed living and working in the area.

There really wasn't a nightlife unless you went into central Manchester which was quite far for most of us travelling from Stockport and can often cost a lot of money especially in a taxi. However, there are nice bars and pubs about 10-15 mins drive away. There are more country pubs than anything else.

There are a few things that the sports and social organise there is a Christmas party and a night out a year. then they have activities every three months such as indoor skiing/snow activities etc. in addition, there is a football tournament against other Agilent offices in Barcelona and football pitches booked every two weeks. They also organise some hikes.