Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers so read on to find out how Ben has been getting on!

“It’s about time for my second blog, so here we go.

8 weeks into my placement and I’m starting to realise I have made the right choice. The four weeks I’ve now had working alone (without the previous intern training me) have shifted into a new gear, gradually increasing in workload, responsibility and dare I say stress. But as I keep telling friends and family, it’s a “good” level of stress.

The pace has definitely picked up since my last blog, I have taken on multiple research projects which people have asked me conduct, allowing me to demonstrate some of the techniques I have learnt over the past two years. More importantly I have been learning techniques used in financial analysis which I have not come across before. This has provided me with exposure to an area of banking and finance which I am really beginning to enjoy. I am confident the work I’m doing now will help determine the modules I will take in my final year of university: to focus more on finance and econometrics, rather than economic theory say.

I have also been involved in the development and improvement of a new website which the department is intending to roll-out soon. Being asked to think like a client who is using the website has been a useful experience as I constructively scrutinise aspects which could be improved. Since all of the department’s research is published, having a website which is user friendly and efficient is imperative.

When I say I feel I have made the right choice, this not only refers to choosing State Street, who, to give credit, are a tremendously integrated business. The employees are more than willing to help you, and the consensus from the cohort of interns is that even after 8 weeks they felt like a part of the business. My other reference ties into how everyone who I speak to is telling me how invaluable a placement year in industry is. Every week someone else tells me how they wish they had followed a similar path or how much they would value, as an employer, a candidate for a job who has applied skills from experience in the workplace. This reassures me that taking a year out in industry is one of the best decisions I have made, and I recommend this option to anyone considering it. If a year is not possible at your university, a summer internship will provide you with an invaluable insight whilst demonstrating to employers that you are keen and motivated to work in a particular industry. Even if all you learn is that you’re not suited to that particular business or industry, you will come away with insight and experience,; two of the most valuable assets as a graduate.”

Find out more from Ben and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!

Hello I’m Samantha and I’m from Aston University where I’m studying combined honors in Business and Psychology. It has been good at university learning all the theory but the main thing I have been looking forward to is my placement year where I can get some real experience. I’m lucky enough that Microsoft have given me the opportunity to spend that year with them!

The first week was an induction week where all the different departments within Microsoft gave presentations and explained what they did. Half way through the week we had an outdoors day, where luckily the sun kept shining! This involved playing human table football, inflatable volleyball and building catapults! Then the week was finished off with an end of year “All hands” meeting. Where Gordon Frazer told us how well the UK had done – so well we were position front and center at the yearly MGX meeting in America. Also my department was given a special award for being sub of the year! So that made me very excited to be working with them! Then it was back out into the lovely sunshine for a BBQ by the lake.

Following week was straight down to proper work. I was introduced to my department – Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) and my team, the audience marketing group. There are three audiences – developer, academic and IT Pro. I work with one other person for the IT Pro audience. This means that straight away I was told I would be doing the job of a full-time employee (FTE) as there were only two of us there was lots of work to be done.

I got straight into the deep end and was given a campaign to run. I am heading up the optimised desktop campaign which is Microsoft’s vision for making people productive anywhere, managing risks through enhanced security and control as well as reducing cost through streamlining PC management. This is capable through having Windows 7 enterprise, IE8, Office 2010, MDOP and the concept of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). As you can probably guess by now there is a huge amount of acronyms used here and just learning those was a serious hurdle. Though now I do have to remind myself not to use them when talking to someone outside Microsoft! The second obstacle was all the technological knowledge. I spent the first week reading up on the technology to understand how it all worked. With my audience being IT pro’s I realized I would never know as much as them, but I was determined to know enough to at least be able to hold up a conversation with them!

Once I had got my head round that I got stuck into the campaign. This involved planning out all the high level messaging that I wanted to be saying and then drilling down to the specific that I wanted to be saying throughout the months. Due to budget restrictions most of the marketing is done digitally – as I found I would get to know our TechNet website very well! I am now in the process of waiting to heard back from the agency I briefed to see what ideas they have come up with for a landing page to clearly get our message of the optimised desktop out to the over 1 million IT Pro’s!

I also get to work closely with our evangelists who know everything there is to know about the technology and go out and speak to the audiences. They are great to have a chat with to find out what the audience is thinking and what they want. They are always putting together fun videos and pod casts to teach the audience how to use and deploy the new technologies. Together with them I am going to create an event where they run a series of live meetings which all get put onto a website. Then there will be questions asked with prizes given out to the IT Pro that blogs back the fastest correct answer. This is an idea to create something fun for IT Pro’s to get them involved in our technology.

Last year was a big launch year for Microsoft with W7 coming out. Having seen the adverts on the TV, I wanted to get involved with a launch this year. I got a place on the Office communicator v-team and was giving the responsibly of owning the IT Pro readiness plan. Therefore I will be running several events for IT Pro’s to come to where the new launch will be demonstrated so they can get a real understanding of the steps forward taken with this launch. Luckily as part of the team I am already running the new software and it’s so good, I’m really excited about our audience seeing it!

As well as my day to day job in the office Microsoft gives me a lot of opportunity to take on stretch projects. One I took on fairly early was to be the leader of the Millennials v-team. For those that haven’t heard of the term millennials before they are the generation that were born from 1980-2000. Hence they have grown up with technology all around them enabling them to be digitally native. The workforce culture and environment is changing and they are driving this change. So I wanted the opportunity to lead the team and educate others on what the workplace of the future will be like.

All this sounded very daunting when I started but due to the great network of support it soon became not so daunting! When I first got there I was set up to have weekly 1-on-1 meeting with Phil who has been in the company for over 18 years and knows everything about the IT Pro audience. They told us at the beginning that everyone in the company would be very happy to meet us for a quick cup of coffee if we had any questions. I at first didn’t fully believe this, but I can say now – full of many cups of coffee that it it’s true. People from all over the company are happy to spend time 1-on-1 to help me develop a network of contacts so that I always have someone to ask for help when I need it.

A recent article published by The Times Higher Education, once again emphasises the importance of work experience. The article, by Rebecca Attwood, talks about the change in approach by Universities. Rebecca says, “As graduates struggle to find employment, universities are having to think more creatively about how to prepare them for the workplace.”

‘Many countries have a long history of degrees that combine off-campus work placements with on-campus academic study. But research indicates that the extent to which this is part of the typical student experience varies significantly.’

‘Survey data published by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information at The Open University last year indicate that the UK has one of the lowest rates of participation in work placements in Europe, at around 30 per cent. The only country where the figure was lower was Italy, at 22 per cent.’

‘In contrast, the figure was 84 per cent in France and 87 per cent in the Netherlands.’

Rogier Boogers, academic information officer at the University of Amsterdam, explains: “Higher education in the Netherlands is set up with a binary system: the traditional academic universities, like the University of Amsterdam, and the institutions focused on vocational education, for instance the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. At the vocationally oriented institutions, almost 100 per cent of the students undertake an internship.”

‘At the University of Amsterdam, a six-month internship is optional for bachelor’s degree students.’

‘In the US, courses that alternate work placements with university study are commonly known as cooperative education and are offered by about 500 higher education institutions. At Drexel University, a private university in Philadelphia, this form of education has been running for 93 years. The majority of Drexel students take a five-year bachelor’s degree, during which they leave the campus to take part in three six-month work placements: once in the second year, once in the third year and once in the fourth year.’

“The big advantage of the model is that students can try out different areas of work and leave university with a clear idea of what they want to do”, says Peter Franks, senior associate vice-provost for career education in Drexel’s Steinbright Career Development Center.

“It’s a chance for students to test what they’re learning in the workplace, to understand the relevance of it and to learn more about themselves and their career interests.

“They’ve had 30 interviews by the time they graduate. They know how to interview and they know how to job search. They have a CV that is substantial with professional work experience.”

However, “In the UK, figures suggest a decline over the past 12 years in the number of sandwich courses combining study and work placements. According to a joint Universities UK and CBI report published last year (Future Fit: Preparing Graduates for the World of Work), 10.5 per cent of all undergraduates in 1994-95 were classified as being on a sandwich course, but by 2006-07 the figure had dropped to 6.5 per cent.”

For more from this article, click here.

Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers so read on to find out how Ben has been getting on!

“I am currently 3 weeks into my placement with State Street and am here writing my first blog. The question on everyone’s lips for me is: so how is it going? To them, I am reserved. It hasn’t started as quickly as I anticipated, and maybe that’s a fault of my own for being a very eager person. But inside I really feel like this is the first stepping stone into a long and successful career, which I cannot wait to progress along. The other question is: how was your first day? This, as I’m sure most people will say was incredibly exciting but at the same time I did struggle to remember that I was only an intern and nothing was expected of me yet. This is something I would recommend to people moving into a placement: yes it will be scary but you’re a new employee and expected to know nothing, this was how I felt!

The people at State Street have entirely made the placement what it is so far, very friendly and approachable, whilst professional at their desk. For me, the people were always going to be the most important part of my internship, and I am lucky that it is one of the finer qualities of State Street. I assume this aspect is to credit for their terrific client reputation and success as a custodial bank. Moreover, the transition period over which I am shadowing the current intern is paying off, and I have a lot to owe Neill for being a very good teacher. This time next week, Neill will have left and the responsibility will be on my shoulders, I am nearly ready to take over.

My job title exists as Global Research Intern and I am responsible for a few specifics. On a daily basis I will send out research publications which I will update from our raw data sources and send out to clients who have been in contact with the sales team and benefit from our research. These are often a few pages worth of charts which update the client about what is happening in their chosen markets or global regions for example. The work is heavily based on Excel, which up until now I thought I was mildly competent at, however I had only ever saw the tip of the iceberg! The learning of this program happens very quickly as I am using it all day. Aside from this, I will be conducting ad-hoc prices of research for my manager over the coming year. I have already finished my first which will aid the induction of a new employee due to start in 2 weeks time, this was a really satisfying exercise.

One of the other qualities of an internship is that there are other students in the same boat as you, so being encouraged to meet up with them for drinks at the end of each week was a godsend. You feel like an outsider when in a new company and the average age of an employee is 30+, however an evening with the interns will remind you what it feels like to be in the union bar! I encourage all interns to meet up with other interns at the institution they are placed at; it will improve the experience tenfold.

On the whole, my placement has started great! Working on Canary Wharf is a dream; teamed with the company’s credentials, I am very happy! I do come home tired and eager to relax, but each evening I cannot wait to get back into the city, this is enough to tell me that it’s going well!”

Find out more from Ben and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!