Name: Harry Large
Placement Company: Sony Europe
Placement Role: Business Intelligence Analyst
Why did you choose to do a placement year?
To further enhance and develop the skills I’d learnt during my first two years of studying. Not fully knowing what I wanted to do once I’d finished my degree, I knew that a placement would be best for me to understand my career ambitions and prospects. It was also intriguing to get an insight into working at a major company and gain some invaluable experience.
What companies did you apply for?
Sony Europe, EON, EDF Energy, Vodafone, Unilever, 123-reg
When did you start applying?
I started applying during the beginning of November as I didn’t know until then that I wanted to do a placement. It was unfortunate that I missed the deadline for some of the other companies that I’d have liked to apply for, but the deadline was sooner in September and October.
What challenges did you face when applying?
The main challenge I had initially was knowing which role I wanted to apply for. I spent countless hours searches different career paths, viewing various job descriptions and job profiles that explained an example working day for a role. It was also very boring applying for lots of roles at the same time and the length of some application processes were quite tedious; I ended up stopping some application midway through as they took too long!
An embarrassing challenge I faced was accidentally leaving two applications to the last day before the deadline and sending the wrong cover letters to each company. I didn’t realise for a good week before going over the application overviews – there was no response from either company so you can assume why!!
What support did you get when applying?
We had many lectures to help us understand some of the different parts of the application process. Having a piece of coursework in CSC2023 that gave feedback on our CV’s was useful and helped me to create a strong one that I used for my applications – I also went to Career Service for them to have a check of it. Speaking to current placement students at the time of applying gave me an understanding of what could appear in an interview, assessment centre or coding test for example.
What were your key roles during the placement?
Key Roles:
- Assist in the execution, development and automation of a range of reporting from various source systems by the retrieval, analysis and consolidation of large and complex data sets.
- Create and improve solutions in old/new systems to maintain the handling and distribution of data throughout the company.
- Assumed responsibility for providing support to users with specialist software issues and requests.
- Provided step-by-step specialised software training for new employees/ users using the tools.
- Handled the maintenance of several shared inbox and the distribution of emails to the relevant employees.
- Authorised the required reviewing and approval for SAP PBP roles to users, which would give them access to new reports and queries.
- Helping to install and setup software/ Excel tools on users machine that would assist in the budget process allowing Excel to connect and retrieve data from a database using SQL.
- Created and distributed weekly reports that displayed the stock and sale figures of Sony products for all Strategic Account Groups.
- Worked on several individual projects which included the reviewal and deletion of redundant queries used by the company and the reviewing of two database field to look for potential harmonisation.
What was the highlight of your placement year?
I had two highlights from my placement year that made it amazing. My first highlight was appearing as an extra in one of the promotional adverts for a new pair of Sony sports headphones. It was something I’d never done before and was an interesting experience watching the recording of the advert taking place, as well as appearing on the gym equipment.
The second highlight was my departments Budget meal after the financial season for Sony. We work at the back-end of the system that supports the uploading and data handling of all financial and material information for all of Sony Europe. The meal was an all you can eat Japanese restaurant with Karaoke – watching all the big managers in Sony singing along to various songs and relaxing after a long 4 months was brilliant!
What is the importance of a placement year?
- You can gain experience by learning from employers in the industry – something invaluable for when you graduate.
- You can meet some amazing new people and network with a wide range of colleagues from different departments and many nationalities – there was over 60 at the offices I was based in.
- It’s nice to earn a bit of money that can be saved for the future.
- You get given more responsibility than you would expect someone of our age to in the company.
- It looks very good on your CV when applying for graduate roles.
- It gives you great experience of understanding the application process and all the different stages included. Even if you don’t make it through a stage, you will learn from this for next time!