Finance Intern Review

I enjoyed my position and had a challenging role with good exposure to different areas of the company. However, as I progressed into the latter stages of my role, with a manager change occurring during my placement, I felt more isolated and my work load varied a lot week to week which detracted from my experience overall.

I felt highly valued initially, but as my manager changed, my team's dynamic changed too and I was left feeling more isolated and a bit like a third wheel. My manager tried to include me but I felt more like it was out of obligation rather than will.

I was helped a lot at the start of my placement to understand my role and to fit in. I was given a lot of support to get me going but this reduced with me gaining competency in my role. Towards the end of my placement I receive much less support but this is to be expected.

At quarter and month ends I was fairly busy, but for the rest of the time I was very busy half of the week and not as busy the rest. The requirements of my role meant I couldn't spread the activities over the week and this left a imbalanced workload. I made up for this by partaking in giveback opportunities, but feel that I wasn't able to obtain more work to sustain me fully for a week towards the end of my placement.

I was entrusted with maintaining/updating a range of important documents and this was encouraging and made me feel part of the team. My role didn't allow for greater documents to be handled as I became more competent, but I expect I would of been given the chance in a different type of role.

My role was not directly relevant to my degree at all and it was really only the softer and business skills that I developed a lot on my placement. However, these will be highly useful for future careers and it has helped to improve my perception of working and my organisation skills which will help me in my degree studies.

The office was generally full as I sat within another team which I got on well with. During my placement we all moved offices and this actually detracted from the mood in the office and it was more quiet. Working near over interns helped boost my mood but generally the atmosphere was work and quiet.

IBM has a very well integrated placement scheme and it shows that it has been operating for a number of years. However, being one of many interns, I can see it being easy to feel that I was part of the crowd. There are pieces in place to help alleviate this, but overall the scheme is well organised.

I am able to partake in numerous training schemes, and a number different training/enrichment activities were put on for interns during the placement year. I feel like IBM did invest to help my personal training and development.

From my position, it looks difficult to obtain a position going forwards unless going onto the graduate scheme and this has limited roles in limited business areas and as a result I am not able to apply to an area of my skill/interest.

The intern community was large and there were lots of friendly people to spend time with. Everyone sits together at lunch and it is nice to be with lots of people sharing the same experience.

Prices for living and socialising are good, a lot cheaper than London!

Portsmouth isn't the best for nightlife, but personally, I am into bars rather than clubs and there are a number around that fit the bill.

There were some opportunities with giveback and sporting teams, but the rest was self-organised.