Aaron has been blogging for us over the last year, whilst on placement at Trigger Software. It’s been great to hear from him and we wish Aaron all the best for the future. Below is his last blog for RateMyPlacement – enjoy!

“Morning all.

So as the title suggests, I am into my last few weeks at Trigger. After a lot of packing I will be heading home for the summer and to start my dissertation prep and prep work for any group projects that I will be a part of in my final year.

My final weeks at Trigger will be spent on finishing up a new European site for one of our main clients (cannot name), touching up on some surveys that will be finishing shortly and concluding any leftover documentation for CO229 (placement module at University for this placement).

I haven’t done as much as I would have wanted in my final couple of months at Trigger but over the course of the entire 13 months that I have been within the company, I have learnt a significant amount within different areas of the business. What I have learnt at Trigger will definitely ensure I take on next year and my future career in a new light compared to how I approached things before placement.

Below is a list of the departments/areas that I have worked within over the past year:

• Testing
• Support
• Support development
• Development

As I will not be on placement through July/August I will be making sure that I get stuck in with finishing (well, starting) sullivandoesdesign.com properly. It will probably be built upon WordPress but totally revamped. It will allow people to see my full collection of previous work, see what I am up to (new blog) and request any quotes for work that they may want me to do. This will go live end of August, ready for the new University year. The new blog will outline what I am doing for my University modules so you can see how I am getting on as the year progresses.

Apologies for not providing as much content on this placement blog throughout the year as I would have wanted. The year has been very busy and I haven’t had that much time left to go into that much detail.

If you are at University and you are thinking of doing a placement, make sure you try your hardest to find one; you won’t regret it in the long run.

Thank you to anyone who has read my blog over the year and special thanks go to Trigger Software for allowing me to work within the company for 13 months.”

Any questions, queries for design work or anything, contact me.

E: aaron@sullivandoesdesign.com FB: http://facebook.com/sullivana

Feel free to leave your comments below!

It’s an exciting and sad time as many of you are approaching the end of your placements.  Our Guest Blogger at Trigger, Aaron updates us with his experiences so far.  Read onto find out what he has been up to in the past few months……

“Believe it or not, in the last few months I have been doing a lot of development work in several different areas of the business.

The main project that I have been working on for a while now is developing our own ‘wallboard’, well plural, we are going to have quite a few. We started out by using a website called Geckoboard. Geckoboard is a website which allows you to have dashboards which display information from various different systems etc in the form of widgets. Geckoboard comes with a lot of standard widgets which can be useful but some widgets are just not specific enough for our needs. I went straight in and started developing from scratch, a script which can be plugged into the Geckoboard to display pie charts, numbers, text etc from the systems we use. At the moment the company utilises many pieces of software to store information on projects, opportunities, invoices, support tickets and much more, but the stats from these are not being shown anywhere. My script allows you to pass a given format in and relevant attributes to support this format (depending on what is required for each).

As well as finishing up on the Geckoboard and getting the stats up on some large screens around the office, I am going to be doing some Flex shadowing and working with a few people around the office to increase my skills base. I will be on Support Development all the way to the end of my placement but have the opportunity to move away quite freely when required, for when I want to do Flex, for example, or my continuation with PHP. Within Trigger we have an application range which is for engagement purposes, I have slowly been taking over the setup etc of these from one of the QA managers who has been doing these for years now, there is lots of detail within the processes but learning of all of this is extremely beneficial to myself when/if I come back.

If you have any questions regarding my Geckoboard script or anything else you want to mention, go ahead and add a comment!

Will have a final couple of updates coming up shortly, as I am into my last few months within Trigger (The lucky people at Trigger have chosen to keep me on for an extra month though so my time has been extended). There will probably be one mid May after I come back from Tenerife and one at the end of my placement

You can find out more from Aaron, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at Trigger?

We are all aware of the high levels of graduate unemployment and the rising costs of attending university.

It’s not all bad though!  An article in Personnel Today discusses how important undergraduate work experience is, both for students and employers. Maria Floud, senior graduate recruitment manager at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, states that the increase in university fees is making employers reflect on their schemes and realise how important it is to attract students from an earlier age.

“The internship model used as a key pipeline to the graduate programme is very successful. We recently won the ‘Best Placement and Internship’ award by Rate My Placement, due to the focus we put on ensuring this programme to find great talent earlier on.”

Congratulations to Grant Thornton and thanks for our mention – hopefully this will give employers and students the oomph and encouragement to undertake a placement or internship scheme  :)

If you’re a student there is still time to grab a placement or internship this summer so check out the opportunities on http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/search

We are also interested to hear your thoughts so drop us a line with your comments below.

Thanks,

The RateMyPlacement Team

It’s an exciting time as many of you people on placement break the half way stage. Our Guest Blogger at CSC, David Galbraith updates us with his experiences so far…

“6:30am: I’ve woken to get into the office for 8. Unfortunately this is one of the 90% of the time I will ‘regretfully’ change my alarm to 7:00 and take the later train. Sometimes I’ll be sleepy and mistakenly change the clock on my phone instead of the alarm; resulting in being as late as I am tired.

7:30am: I’m praying for a stray copy of CITY AM, but as always, disappointed to get the metro. I get into work around 8.30.

9:00am: Roll into the office, picking up breakfast on the way (great canteen at HQ). I’m updated on e-mails so crack into the redesigning of a spreadsheet workbook for a monthly metrics report to be presented on client site. Could be a big deal and lots of saved hours If I can implement a straight through process for the data entry.

11:00: Am a little fed up now with cell merging and alignment nuisances so I use this opportunity to chase up a work shadowing opportunity with the UK Sales Director. I’m just after completing my last shadowing within Human Resources, which involved sitting behind the scenes on an assessment centre and constructing a report suggesting ways to improve the Assessment and recruitment process.

12pm: Early lunch to miss the queues. Heading down to meet with the other interns and a couple of the graduates. Gamon again. My plate is (again) hidden under a mound of spuds. Conversation is of the utmost quality as it quickly mutates from (the days) work into topical banter regarding the Irish famine, Dawei Wang’s hair (See picture) and of course planning the next night out.

13pm: Lunch done. Ate too much so drowsy now. Preparing a plan for a job that we will be orchestrating across the water (which will now be made harder as a result of my overfeed). I’m running an audit alongside the work, which is a hefty job, so requires accurate planning. Problem being confusion concerning the task direction, which seems to change every week.

15pm: Catch up with a team member to discuss progress on another of my tasks, to complete a retrospective audit on some assets. This is a very ambiguous task of recording all asset details of all-of-some software items. I suggest we meet with a project manager who dealt with the items previously. Another day please…

16pm: I’m in control of my work so leave early. I prefer to keep things at extremes. Either I’m one of the first to leave or the last. I don’t appreciate wasted time in the office when the work is under control and I understand how effective a long night of work in the office can be in getting a critical piece of work perfected. I keep my messenger and email on my Curve 24/7 so I’m never out of communication.

17pm: Cue discussion of which bar to visit on the way home with the other interns. This is a very dangerous idea but ALWAYS a good one at the time.

Well there it is. I think it’s important to clear the mist from the ambiguous ‘business’ placement role title and offer an insight into what actually happens day to day.

Overall and otherwise, things are looking well. I have applications rolling for summer placements, and CSC is looking quite good  concerning a post-university graduate programme. I picked up a Recognition Award last month and have just been assigned to a new project. Seems cool. Will update again soon.

Good Luck in your applications!”

You can find out more from David, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at CSC?

Throughout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers so read on to find out how Aaron has been getting on at Trigger!

“Wow. So it’s been a hell of a few weeks (about 7 since I last posted on here) over at Trigger! I apologise for my lack of updates.  Everyone has been so busy holding large projects together and managing the new ‘better way of working’ for Trigger.  Chris (MD), Luke (OM) and some other employees have decided that the company needs a revamp into the way it works. As well as simply working for the organisation over the past 6 months, I have been involved in trying to improve its processes, the way in which support functions differently and a lot more, towards this change. Everyone at Trigger is definitely sick of the ‘interrupted’ approach to work that is currently present in the studio, everyone has a lot more potential than what is currently being used.

The first main step to a ‘better way of working’ is a structured and responsive support team. A primary first action was to then setup a dedicated support centre with not just one person on support, but a team, this is what is now coming into play. This is one reason why I have not had much time recently to get a post in, because I have been covering Conor who has been on paternity leave, he is back now though, many congratulations to him! As well as covering Conor on support for our clients, I was also requested at the same time to ‘show the ropes’ to someone on a Support Trial, this made for a tough couple of weeks. Things are now settling back down to a level where I can enjoy myself again, as I slowly move back into a developers role for my last 6 months within the company. My development role was pushed back once again when I had to cover support, but before that I spent 3/4 weeks on helping with the development and language management for 4 EURO sites for a large client of ours (FR/DE/BE-FR and BE-NL), these are now live for the people within these countries.

To help me with moving into my development role, David Liewe popped into the studio a couple of weeks ago to see what I have been doing and to analyse my placement. I think the hour went well, he spoke to Kim, one of my placement advisers, she told David exactly what I have been doing and how I have been an asset to the company the time I have been here (something that is very reassuring to hear about).

Now that I am eventually moving into more development work (less support – yes!) I can get stuck into some AS3/Flex, get to grips with some more PHP work and generally move forward, good times! This Monday I have been requested by Chris (MD) to be a support developer for a short while to enable me to get my feet on the ground, after I can move to the development bench. Something to look forward to. I will let you all know how I do soon, hopefully my next update will be in a few weeks and not a few months.

Enough of work, outside of placement has also been a blast. I have been busy seeing Uni friends, popping home and have booked my holiday to Tenerife in May. Next on the agenda is Wales next week, some Christmas shopping, Christmas at home for a few days and then hopefully a big new years!”

You can also find out more from Aaron, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at Trigger?

Danny tells us what it’s like spending his 12 month placement at Experian, hear his experiences and see what skills he’s gained during his time.

• Name: Danny Roden
• University: Aston
• Course: BA (Hons) Business and Management
• Placement / Internship Position/Job Title: Year Placement: Project Analyst

What was the application process like?

“The application process was very efficient. I saw the job on the Business School’s intranet, and applied using an online form. Within a week or so I got a phone call back inviting me to do a telephone interview, and immediately after that was a face-to-face interview (4 days after). All in all the process was very quick, and communication was very good, unlike a lot of other placement jobs I’d also applied to.”

What do you do on a daily basis?

“The work I’m doing here is exactly the same as what a graduate would be doing, in this role. Day to day activities include: responding to email queries, chasing suppliers/internal departments to keep our updates cycle on time, as well as doing project work, attending and contributing in various meeting. This has taught me the importance of prioritisation and meeting deadlines as well as given me the skills necessary to do this.

At QAS there’s always opportunities to engage in new projects/activities; at present I’m working on a project which involves creating a schedule of workloads between different departments involved with the updates cycle, and another project that’s looking at giving the graduate section of the careers website a complete overhaul.

Recently we’ve had a National Company Meeting (NCM), where everyone who works for Experian QAS meets up (this time at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium) to learn about what’s going on in different areas of the business and meet lots of new people. This day I found thoroughly enjoyable and mentally engaging as it gave me a real opportunity to see, from a top level, how the company is progressing and evolving, as well as a fair insight into some substantial projects that are going on.”

What did you learn on your placement / Internship?

“I’m only 3 months into my placement year here, and already I feel like I’ve progressed loads. I’ve developed project management skills (prioritisation, time handling, communication etc), general business skills (handling a very busy inbox, dealing with queries, explaining complex things in an understandable manner), and also some technical skills (using new pieces of software, looking into raw data etc). As well as all this I’ve learnt a lot about how a business-to-business (B2B) organisation works as well as a great insight into a market I’ve had very little prior knowledge on.

Overall I feel like each day brings with it a new challenge/problem, which I’m tackling and learning/developing useful and transferable skills from.”

Any top tips for a student interested in a placement / internship here?

“Take hold of any opportunities available, and get involved with loads of projects. Meet loads of people and socialise. I’ve made loads of great contacts through playing squash/badminton, and attending social events, with colleagues who I’d otherwise not have met.”

What are your thoughts? Would you like to work for Experian? Has this helped you with the application process? Comment below!

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 Sarah has been getting on!

“My name is Sarah. I’m 21 years old and I have recently begun working at GlaxoSmithKline. I say recently but it has been 12 weeks already and it has gone so fast!!! I can’t quite believe I am nearly a quarter of the way through my year!! I can’t believe it was a year ago I was just starting to think about applying for placements and now I am fully immersed in the world of full time employment.

I have absolutely loved my two years at University and so I was torn as to whether or not I wanted to leave it for a year. However, the advantages of having a year in industry on your CV far outweighed any nostalgic concerns I had about taking a year out.

I began applying in October and GSK was one of the first companies I applied to. I really liked their values and what they stood for as an organisation. After completing an online application form I was progressed through to take part in a Telephone Interview and eventually asked to attend an Assessment Centre.

After the initial excitement of securing the placement, I began to get nervous about what the year had install for me and what my role would be like. Working in a large organisation is unlike anything I have ever done before and so it was a daunting prospect. My main concern was managing my own role and ensuring I did/ do well in it.

My first day was on the 28th June, and within only a few minutes in my office I felt welcomed and much more assured that this experience was something to look forward to as opposed to worry about. My office is open plan, and is one of the many offices in GSK House which operates a “hot desking” system. This means that you have locker and personal lap top and sit somewhere different, next to someone different, within a given space, every day. This helps enhance the open and friendly culture already evident within the organisation.

I am working with the Learning and Development Centre of Excellence for the organisation. This enables be exposure to GSK’s approach on both talent management and strategic resourcing. As well I am responsible for the recruitment of Industrial Placement students, to work within the Global Manufacturing and Supply business unit.

Alongside managing the Industrial Placement scheme I support the Graduate programme. Being so involved in the recruitment of Industrial Placement students and Graduates is very interesting as it is so relevant to me personally. One aspect of my role is facilitating Assessment Centres for both Graduates and Industrial Placements. Within my first month of working at GSK I found myself presented with the challenge of running and organising a Graduate Assessment Centre. This was quite a scary experience at first, as it was only 6 months ago I had been attending one myself. I really enjoyed the experience though; having such responsibility so early one enabled me to feel I could make the role my own from an early stage. The day went well and we were able to fill the 2 positions.

Alongside this work I have also been involved in international discussions to set up Graduate schemes in China and India. One element of this I have particularly enjoyed is learning about how different cultures dictate business activity and behaviour during negotiations.

I have also been involved in some of the marketing of recruitment opportunities and have been asked to carry out a talent review for Graduates at the organisation. Both of these projects are great exposure to different elements of organisational work. With Universities going back later this month, I envisage having a very busy couple of months during the recruitment season! I’m really looking forward to it.”

Find out more from Sarah 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.

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 Aaron has been getting on!

‘To start things off, I want to give you a short bio of myself, which will help you create an overview about me before I go into detail about my placement!

Well first things first, my name’s Aaron Sullivan, I’m 20, I absolutely can’t live without music, I design a lot of digital art and love technology. I am also a student at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham. I have been at the University for 2 years now and have loved every aspect of University life. But, there’s always a but isn’t there, have decided on a change of plan for a year. I have decided on a year out in industry to help me improve my chances of getting a job after University and to get some well needed experience. As well as these two reasons, I also didn’t fancy finishing off my degree just quite yet, the past two years have gone way too fast in my opinion and I don’t think I’m ready to leave just yet.

The process of actually finding a placement was definitely a challenge to say the least. I first started out looking for placements within games companies across the UK, about 100 were contacted in one form or another. After absolutely no luck within this industry I moved towards web design and graphics within Cheltenham, again with no luck due to a lack of responses I moved on. It finally came down to software, which in my mind, after 11 weeks of placement is the right industry for me. If you get down from poor responses from companies, no luck from interviews, don’t worry, you just need to keep on top of your game and keep trying. If you keep adapting your CV for specific job roles, prepare yourself for interviews and get your CV in the right door then you will eventually get the placement you have been searching for, it just doesn’t usually appear after a couple of weeks of searching. I say this from experience.

On the 1st of June 2010, I started my first day at Trigger Software Ltd in Cheltenham. I had seen the office in one or two pictures and briefly on my interview before, but in the flesh as a working environment, it really is a nice place to work. I was given a desk, a computer was setup for me and the usual aspects were created for me over the course of the day, an email account etc. From then on until now I have been doing absolutely all sorts. Over the 10 weeks that I have been at Trigger I have done a mixture of testing, support, some programming, some office admin, backups and lots more, all extremely interesting aspects. At first I did think, “Yeah, get to do programming straight away”, but now looking back, It has been extremely beneficial to get an overview of all areas of the company before going deep down into code.

Well there’s the overview I promised you, and some detail chucked in for good measure. My next blog posts on RateMyPlacement will be in detail every few weeks, so If you want to read more about how I’m doing, keep looking back every so often.’

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