Work Placement Student Review

The first day involved e-learning and a welcome. We had a coffee chat with graduate recruitment and lunch with the associates and trainees. Each day we had an introduction to a department and then a task that a trainee would do to complete. The next day we would receive general feedback on the task. On the last day, we had a final interview.

It was useful to understand the potential roles available. The graduate recruitment was very upfront about the roles, when they would start and the compensation as well as managing expectations over opportunities to qualify into certain areas. I would say that there was not a lot of transparency over how many roles they were recruiting for in the particular office or how many candidates internally and externally we were up against.

The tasks helped reframe my thinking for a more practical arena. We undertook our own research and the feedback afterwards helped us understand what details to look for and how things should be written. I think time management was also very key, meeting deadlines around networking and other talks was essential.

The culture was lovely; the senior associates and trainees interacted in a very encouraging way. The atmosphere was difficult to judge since it was a small office and very few people were in during the week. There were a maximum of maybe eight people in at once so it was very quiet. The culture appeared very relaxed in the office though, which was nice.

Overall, I enjoyed the opportunity. It was very well structured and the people were very friendly.
If I had to offer suggestions, sometimes I felt like there were too many networking opportunities, every day we chatted with someone from the department, which was sandwiched between tasks to the extent that it felt almost artificial. The majority of tasks and feedback were done online with people from offices all over. I understand why this was done but it was hard to see how trainees made wider connections with people outside of the office as everything appeared online. Furthermore, it was difficult to feel included sometimes since you were doing mock tasks rather than live work.

Yes