Finance trainee Review

Thoroughly enjoyed working in the NHS. I was in an awesome team & enjoyed the work I was involved in.

My team really made me feel valued & just like everyone else. I knew I could ask them any questions (no matter how silly the question sounded) & they came to me for help when they needed it.

During my time in the NHS, my manager changed. In the beginning I was with a very experienced manager of placement students. However, it took my 2nd manager a while to get used to managing a placement student. It was a learning experience for the both of us.

I frequently found myself (especially with my 2nd manager) having to asking for more work a lot. I found myself getting really bored. After getting frustrated that my manager just wasn't giving me more work to do, I would offer my time to others in my team who were more than happy to give me tasks to do, but I would have preferred it if I had a steady workflow of projects that I had more responsibility for.

Although I would do a lot of different tasks for people, under my 2nd manager I felt I didn't have much responsibilities at all. When I questioned as to why this was, the response was that they will sort it & just need to 1st get everything organised (we experienced a massive reorganisation whilst I was there) but i felt like nothing was ever done in my time there.

I cannot express how much I have learnt from doing this placement. My 1st ever job & it's certainly been an eye opener! It's increased my understanding of theories I had previously learnt at uni & has given me a better perspective going into 3rd. I feel much more confident now about getting a job after uni because I feel like my placement has helped me grow & develop so much.

The atmosphere was always good & fun in our office & visitors frequently mentioned how much better the atmosphere was in our office compared to others in the NHS. There was tension at times due to tight deadlines but we all did our best to help each other out.

The only problems seemed to generate from the huge reorganisation we went through. I felt like for a long time when we were going through these changes, I wasn't made aware of what my new role would be. I also felt like when I was in my new role, they didn't have a set workflow for me (along with other members in our team), so I think that could have been organised better.

I was involved in training sessions attended by everyone & student sessions where i was the only 1 in the office who attended. i felt like they tried to give me as much experience as they could.

I would love to go back to the NHS, especially if it was back to the team I was in. However, for my own future goals, I would like to experience working for different types of companies in different roles in finance.

When social events were organised, they were good & fun. However, there wasn't many organised in my time there. There would also be a group of people who would not turn up to any social event unless it meant going in working hrs when the senior team said it was ok.

The town that I worked in seemed a little bit cheaper than the city I live in (I commuted) but not as cheap as my Nothern uni city.

In the town there were a few pubs. With 2 cities with good nightlife either side of the town, it wasn't a popular destination for nights out.

A sort of weight watchers club but that's it.