Product Integration Undergraduate Review

As the Product Integration Undergraduate at VWFS, I primarily support multiple product teams to launch their financial products/services and provide in-life support for those products and services. Day-to-day, I work closely with Product Integration Managers, Channel Manager and Product Owners to undertake a variety of tasks including: Incident management and the monitoring of live product issues, ensuring smooth communication and cohesion amongst each product team and conducting primary research from a customer's point of view to identify inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement.

Since day 1 I felt a valued member of the team and high levels of responsibility during my placement to the point I didn't even feel as if I was an undergraduate. For example, multiple product owners and channel managers came to me to review their current customer journeys as a fresh set of eyes and to provide recommendations to these journeys. In addition to this, I was involved in the process of designing and introducing these recommendations/improvements into the journey with the relevant product manager.
It was great to see how my ideas could be turned into something real within these customer journeys. I was regularly dealing with mainly internal but also stakeholders, again helping me feel a valuable part of the team.

During my placement at VWFS, I have significantly enhanced my skills in cross-functional and stakeholder collaboration, whilst also gaining hands-on experience with with Agile framework by working in 2 week sprints and using project tracking tools like JIRA on a daily basis. As part of the sprint process, I would participate in daily stand-ups and regularly present during these that ultimately improved my confidence in doing so. Whilst working across multiple teams simultaneously, I have been able to improve my time management skills as I have a varying workloads for each time and also my adaptability as I have grown to become accustomed to each team's unique ways of working.
Also, through working alongside senior colleagues, I have grown to become more confident in myself and substantially improve my communication and presenting skills. Similarly, I have substantially developed my ability to conduct customer research and identify inconsistencies and provide opportunities for improvement.

I received a high level of support and guidance during my placement, in particular through my line manager(s) who have been there for me 24/7 and provided me with opportunities whilst also helping me put plans in place for things I wanted to achieve personally too. With my line manager being a previous graduate this also helped shape my placement year as he could relate to things I was going through.
The undergraduate life skills programme also provided levels of guidance across the year to boost those areas of my skillset that I would usually struggle with and avoid.

The culture & atmosphere at VWFS have always been super welcoming and inclusive so I felt I could always be myself. I have always felt a valued member of the business and all teams I have worked with were supportive and open to sharing knowledge. I also loved the fact that even those in senior positions have an open door policy and I could put time in with them. Communication was also open and transparent whereby I could reach out for feedback and I would receive it the majority of the time.

I have really enjoyed my placement to the point whereby I have seeked opportunities to learn about wider areas of the business and make it clear I'd love to return to the business in future.

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