Analyst Review

I had a fantastic placement. I was given signifiant responsibility and had much face to face client contact. I was able to establish myself as a credible resource for both accenture and the client. I was given significant support and training not only by my manager but the wider Accenture community on my project. I also found that it was a throughly enjoyable social environment, where Accenture made a lot of effort to organise events and opportunities to meet senior managers.

I felt immediately part of the team. I was included in all meetings emails and social events and quickly felt like I could contribute inteligently. Colleagues would always help when required but were also happy to rely on me for a range of work.

I was provided with a lot of IT support initially and given detailed training on a range of Microsoft packages. Subsequently training was on an ad hoc continual basis in the form of informal and formal feedback on my work outputs and deliverables.

Initially for the first 3 months I was reasonably busy but on a basis of a 9-5 working day and not feeling under pressure. This was due to embedding me in a complex environment with a large learning curve. In the last 5 months I was increasingly busy and working significantly longer hours.

I was given significant responsibility particularly in being entrusted to communicate with the client on a daily basis without any manager suprevision. I was responsible for answering senior client stakeholder concerns - researching solutions in my remit or otherwise esclating client queries to my team. I was responsible for a deliverable which was included in my teams scope of work, and it would feed into developing training materials and the clients internal process design work.

My Accenture placement quipped me for skills for life. Most notably was my advancement in written and verbal communication skills, my confidence in communicating with any level of stakeholder and handling unforseen critical circumstances I atrribute to Accenture and my manager. In addition, I have developed excellent IT skills and a fantastic attention to detail which will continue into my degree studies. Furthermore, the opportunity to interact on a daily basis with colleagues much more senior to myself in age, provided me with many life lesson anecdotes.

The general atmosphere in my office was fantastic. I worked in a team made up of both Accenture and client resource; at times this detracted from the atmosphere as Accenture had to be political in their communication, however, often the client enhanced the atmosphere as well. Team moral was very high and communication from senior managers kept everyone engaged and abreast of project news and performance. The atmosphere was engendered by a mutual respect and team bonding socially outside of the office.

My placement was very impressive. HR did a great job at communicating with me both whilst I was an employee and a pre joiner. They also organised numerous social events and charity days.

I did not go on external courses for training, however, I was given time and support from my Accenture team.

During my final appraisal I was recommended to be offered a graduate position within the ACG. They treat their staff fantastically and have a very healthy work life balance.

Socially there were about 40 people between the age of 18 and 22. Socials occured at least weekly regardless of whether HR had organised an event or not. In addition, there was a fantastic social scene out of town on my project, with a large number of accenture resources. Drinks and dinner most nights were commonplace.

I was fortunate enough to be on an out of town project therefore, I was entitled to a £30 living bursary each day as well as being able to expense in hotel accomodation. I could also expense petrol. Therefore, being out of town had a low cost of living.

My project was based out of town in Horsham, there was a variety of bars, restaurants and clubs that we frequented during the week, however, London was easily accessable and is where we spent most of our thursday and friday nights.

On my out of town project there was a different sport activity every night if you wished to participate.