Student Advisor - Intern Review

The placement organised by Osborne Training was an extremely well thought out and enjoyable experience. I feel Osborne Training has given me a fantastic insight into the workplace issues and challenges.

I felt valued by my colleagues regardless of where I was working at the time, and that reflects the fantastic culture Osborne Training is well known for.

Management were essentially there all the time, and were more than happy to put whatever they were doing on hold to help explain things to me.

The workload varied depending on how much the teams had on at the time, as well as the time of the year.

I was given a huge amount of responsibility, but this was placed upon me when I was ready and willing. As I got more comfortable with the team and the work, I was given the responsibilities to deal with various queries from students relating to their account and studies.

The skills I have picked up were mainly technical, and therefore more applicable to work as opposed to being directly applicable to university. A bit of the knowledge I have picked up will directly benefit relevant modules in my final year. However, my general social and interpersonal skills have also vastly improved and these will be useful for both my degree and beyond.

The atmosphere is different across teams. The atmosphere is hard working but quite relaxed. There is more interaction within teams and across the floor. This makes it a more comfortable and laid back atmosphere. Osborne Training is well known for its great working hours, I was rarely in the office past 6:00pm.

The placement is probably less well set up organisationally than the summer internships or the graduate schemes. This is probably due to only taking on 2 placement students in different parts of the business, and as a result is not as structured as the other more common and well defined schemes. However, the HR team were extremely accommodating to extend my placement beyond the time it normally runs for, and the seamless manner they did so deserves great credit.

The main training we had consisted of multiple introductory sessions at the start of the year introducing the various areas of the business, and ongoing on the job training. This was followed with regular meetings with your manager regarding your ongoing progress and development. I feel that a couple of technical and role specific knowledge sessions at the start of the year would have made settling in easier though.