Human Resources Operations Assistant at McDonald’s Global Franchising Limited

As my first office/corporate job I really enjoyed the experience.

My team really made me feel welcome from day one. They always asked for my opinions and i felt that my input was truly valued.

I had one direct line manager who supported me fantastically throughout my year. Additionally the whole team supported and guided me through my role. This enabled me to see a wide variety of management styles and understand different viewpoints on different policies.

As I was the first placement student in this specific role the year started off fairly slowly for me. After the first month I had been given the majority of my key responsibilities and this is when I became very busy. However this taught me that I needed to manage my time more efficiently, once i understood this my workload became perfectly manageable.

I was given overall responsibility for several projects which were on going throughout the year. This was the perfect amount of responsibility I was looking for.

The skills that I gained whilst placement are absolutely relevant to everyday life including getting back into study. I am now much more organised and am able to manage my time more efficiently. I have also learnt a lot about networking and teamwork.

The general atmosphere in the office is very friendly.

The placement scheme overall is run very efficiently.

In this role I was able to chose which courses I would like to attend from the core training curriculum. This meant that any course I went on we were treated like absolute equals to everyone else on the course, our training was not sacrificed because we were only there for one year. I attended a variety of courses during my year placement, all of which have equipped me with skills I can take forward into my degree/further career.

I extended my placement by about 6 weeks and would be delighted to work for them again in the future.

As the placement is located in London there is always lots to do. I enjoyed spending time with the other IP's whether it was going into central london clubbing or just popping to the cinema on a week night.

Living in London is always going to be expensive. We got a great deal with our landlord and lived 15 minute walk from the office, so with no transport costs we saved more money for socialising!

There are no clubs in Finchley but plenty of nice pubs that have a great atmosphere int the evening.

This isn't something I particularly looked into, however the opportunities are out there.