Regional Business Analyst Review

I personally really enjoyed the whole experience of my placement year, mostly because of how many other interns there were alongside me. There were around 40 interns in my year working at Intel with me, so I never felt lonely in the work place. I absolutely loved my job, and it was nice that everyday in the office was different, there was always a different project to get involved with.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues, I never really felt that I was looked down on at all for being an intern. All interns are treated as full time employees and there are always back and forth emails or recognition schemes in place to make sure you are recognized for the great work that you are doing.

There are always plenty of people on hand to offer support and guidance if needed, as alongside your manager, you are assigned an On The Job Coach who has regular meetings with you to help you with any work that you are confused by, or to help you expand your workload to get involved in other projects and teams. My managers were keen to help me complete my mid-year and end of year reviews that were required by my uni and also gave me guidance along the way of how to improve.

My role was largely adhoc, meaning that some weeks I was extremely busy with a large workload, but some weeks I had a bit more time to myself, to complete some uni work or to go and get involved in extra-curricular activities. I feel like you can make yourself as busy as you want to be, as during the quieter periods, other teams are always willing to let you shadow their team members or often require your help and so its good to get involved in other projects.

I was surprised by the amount of responsibility I was given during this year. Straight away within the first few months, I began to own and run a things myself, including running meetings, taking minutes, presenting reports and training new employees on tools. After the first 6 weeks, I began to attend meetings on my own, without my previous intern and without my on the job coach and then began to take control, getting involved in new projects on my own and having my name as an owner next to different projects.

One of my main skills that developed during this year, was my excel skills. This is due to a mixture of just using it on a daily basis and so picking it up quicker, and also the excel training sessions that were put on by my department. Other skills I developed include my presentation skills, as I got thrown in the deep end in to start presenting out to different people, and I also signed up to presentation training sessions throughout the year.

I loved the atmosphere in the office!! Everyone is so so lovely, and everyone stops to say hello and ask how you are getting on, despite their level of management. There is a huge range of age ranges around the office, meaning that there is always someone you will get on well with and end up meeting for lunch or getting involved in different sports with. Everybody is always up for a chat and its nice when its someones birthday, as there are always decorations and cake around!

I think this placement was perfectly set up, from the minute we found out we had the job, the current interns were busy sorting out socials for everyone to meet each other, and setting up group messages to help everyone sort out housing arrangements etc. All the teams that interns have been put into, have had interns before, and so all teams know how the placement year works, and they are keen to ensure you get the most out of this year. The 5 week handover period from the old interns to the new interns is such a great idea.

I feel that they invested huge amounts of time into me, offering me all sorts of excel/presentation training etc. Even in the last few weeks of my placement, I was offered further excel training as well as training in other areas, and was always asked what my manager could be doing more to ensure I was getting the most from my placement.

The graduate scheme here at Intel is extremely appealing, especially after working closely with a few of the graduates and hearing their experiences of coming back after university. Intel treat their employees extremely well and is definitely a company I would love to work for again!

Due to their being 40 interns, the social scene is great. There is an intern social committee which work together to organize different social events on Thursday nights including a Handover Ball to say goodbye to the old interns and welcome to the new interns. The social scene across the teams were also very good, with different teams socializing at different levels, but often including team lunches, team drinks, afternoon activities and Christmas parties.

The cost of living is around average, looking anywhere between 350-500pounds per month. There is a range of different types of housing around swindon, including just renting rooms, or getting together with a few others and renting a house together. Socialising is cheap, with deals on in different bars and activities such as bowling/cinema have cheap nights on different nights of the week.

Nightlife was average, as because its not a university town, there are only a few clubs that open mid week and they are not overly busy. However, there are plenty of bars. Weekends are good/busy in the local clubs. Bristol and Bath are close by too!

There are lots of local sports clubs in the area, that interns have got involved with in the past, such as rugby, football, netball etc as well Intel Football club which is a chance to get involved with other full timers. There are plenty of activities around such as bowling, bingo and ice skating, which the interns regularly attended during the year, including the discounted tuesday nights at the local bowling centre.