Contract admin

I was well welcomed, the people there were brilliant, I was well trained and never got bored. thought out my placement I gradually developed, increasing my knowledge and responsibilities.

I was given a number of daily tasks to fulfil as well as small projects, people used my work and turned to me for information on the area's I was covering. I felt that I was replied upon in a number of area's

I have a number of meeting and reviews with my manager, my manager worked hard to to get me the opportunities I was able to access. She was very helpful in introducing me to a number of people allowing me to increase my knowledge of all area's of the business and allowing me to network.

I have daily tasks that I managed in the morning regarding Contract admin, in the afternoon I mainly handled any invoices I had and worked on the project i had on at the time.

I was given full access to all the systems, I was responsible for validating a number of large invoices costing millions and was also responsible for representing Swindon Back Office in a Global Standardisation and Upgrade project of the system.

I gained a large number of skills in presenting, networking, excel and databases. I learnt how to work with a number of different people from different countries and also had the opportunity to work within a project and learnt the project process.

The back office was always busy, even on christmas eve, there was a great sense of community and the commodity teams worked very well together.

My manager and I set targets for my first month, then reviewed these targets and made a 6 month targets. I was also given a review when the rest of the team recieved their annual review. I had a well structured day and there was time made for me to sit with other collegues to learn about their role.

I was well trained on the job, I was able to attend a futures and options training day. i also went to an Access training session, I was also given German lessons as I have been taking them at university I was allowed to carry them on. I was encouraged to apply for the graduate scheme and was given advise in my preparation for it.

I applied for and was accepted on the Graduate scheme.

There were a number of placement students that were accepted every year about 6 or more, also the Back Office is rather large and all birthdays were celebrated. I also socialised with the people in my team and the teams around me.

The amount that we were paid for our placement was enough to cover living costs and being able to go out to socialise.

It is nothing like what I am used to, it is a little small, but there were a large number of people that went out which made going out more fun, we also went to London a couple of times and stayed with people from the London Office

Football was within work on a Wednesday, Golf and running club were also possible at work. There is no university, which I think made a large difference as there were not the activities available close by.