ITMB Summer Placement Analyst Review

From day one everything on this placement was organised, and this continued throughout the 6 weeks I was there. This placement was thoroughly enjoyable, SAS offers a great social side to supplement a great working environment, which included a running club at lunch times, cricket matches (including their own pavilion and wicket), and football twice a week on their own pitches...not to mention an awesome restaurant (canteen).

I genuinely felt valued by my colleagues and believed the project I was doing contributed to the organisation. My project gave me the opportunity to create a database, that is now used in client scenarios, an outcome which will certainly be valued by colleagues both now and in the future. What's more everyone as SAS went to great lengths to ensure we all had a great placement and successful experience of SAS.

One of the great aspects of the individual project was that we were able to completely manage the project ourselves using both initiative and innovation, however the support network provided by SAS was excellent. This network involved a team manager, able to help with all aspects of the project, and who was a great Subject Matter Expert for the project, a placement supervisor who kept in touch throughout the project with regular contact and an excellent H.R team.

The whole project was thoroughly thought out and planned, with every day pretty much scheduled. The first 3 weeks were extremely busy, with a series of courses and training sessions, including an excellent presentation skills workshop! We were also lucky enough to attend the annual SAS Professionals conference in week 2. This was a great opportunity to spend two days with industry professionals and learn more about the world of Analytics...which is a huge growth area in today's IT industry...a good point to mention that SAS are the market leaders in their field! Once we started the project, our day was governed by us, as we manager our own projects. That means it's up to you to use your initiative to make the most out of your project.

I felt that the placement gave me a reasonable amount of responsibility. As mentioned we self-managed our own projects, and my project personally was a project that had to be done, as instructed by SAS Senior Management, therefore I certainly felt the responsibility. Whilst our projects were given direction, we were encouraged to take sole responsibility and develop it appropriately.

The summer placement at SAS has provided me with a wealth of experience, much more than I would have imagined a 6 week placement would give me. The first week (and my particular project) saw me learn foundation SAS BASE programming language - a very well taught course, even for those who dislike programming, excellent presentation skills coaching - tested out by delivering a presentation at the end of the project. What's more the project delivered a variety of soft skills experience, including team work, project management, time management, networking and ownership and responsibility. I personally gained a deep interest in Analytics and Business Intelligence and hope to expand my SAS skills and network in the future on the back of this great placement!

The atmosphere in the office was quite serious, but those around me were always supportive and willing to help out whenever I needed it. SAS employees as a whole were always friendly and seemed to genuniely enjoy having interns around the office.

As mentioned the placement was extremely well organised with pretty much every day let alone every week organised...sometimes to the hour, thanks to a particulairy well organised placement supervisor. The placement included, courses, training sessions, a 2 day conference, presentations, a day making a video, a lunch with the MD, the SAS summer garden party and not to mention the individual project.

This is the aspect which most stands out as above all, the highlight of the placement. SAS really invest in your personal development. Depsite us being there a relatively short space of time, they provided us with an extensive set of training courses, the most important being the SAS BASE fast track course. This 5 day course taught us the fundamentals of SAS BASE, a programming langauge used by all SAS professionals. A simple web search will show you that this is a skill-set which is in high demand by employers, and one few under-grads will have.

All of the employees I was directly involved with said that I should definitely contact them when I graduated before looking elsewhere...this pretty much showed me their are great future prospects within this company.

As there was only 6 of us, we became very good friends, very quickly. We spent most of our evenings and weekends together, playing sports, going to the cinema and taking part in SAS social events. The only improvement would have been living somewhere with a good nightlife!

Despite being fairly close to London, the cost of living did not strike me as excessive, our rent seemed pretty reasonable, and costs were similar to that of University living costs.

Unfortunately the night life didnt seem that great, however Reading isn't far away, and that's supposed to be a pretty good night out.

There always seemed to be something going on after work, whether that be running at lunch times, cricket, football SAS summer garden party, and two great restaurant outings SAS took us to.