Three University of Birmingham students talk about internship programs that they have been involved with and the benefits they bring to students and professional organisations.
Title: Employable students
Duration: 2.56 mins
Describe your work
Simon Lee: I spent a twelve week placement with an energy company. My official title was a commercial analyst and my day-to-day work would be to sit down, develop the model and continuously improve it so it’s literate to everyone in the office, ranging from IT right through to commercial analyzing, through to smart energy savings.
Jamie Rogers: Last year I took part in a year-long internship in an environmental resource base research company in the United States. My general job title was a Research Assistant. This ranged from doing general lab analysis to more complex data analysis tasks.
Sarah Fullwood: I’m currently undergoing an internship with a television production company in Birmingham. My roles are really varied and diverse. I can be anything from a runner on a film shoot, to writing proposals and press releases.
What skills did you bring to the organization?
Simon Lee: The key skill that I brought to the organization was IT, and in particular modeling – doing an excel model, because what happened was that at the time at the organization it was actually quite a scarce skill and resource within the organization and I just came in time to help out. The key skill that I brought to the organization was IT, and in particular modeling – doing an excel model, because what happened was that at the time at the organization it was actually quite a scarce skill and resource within the organization and I just came in time to help out.
Jamie Rogers: I applied my research and analytical skills I had developed at university. But also some more personal skills that I had used were communication skills, both written and verbal, to communicate between departments and also regulatory bodies, mining organizations that we were involved with in our research.
Sarah Fullwood: I think the skills and knowledge I brought to the organization were obviously communication skills and organizational skills, but also my research skills because when you’re writing a film proposal you have to see what is out there and has already been done – and maybe the ways we can do it differently. So I think the research skills I have learnt during my third year and especially my dissertation have really been a benefit.
How did your achievements impact on the organization?
Simon Lee: My main achievement in the role was creating a cost-saving model which saved around £1.3 million per quarter for the retail business.
Jamie Rogers: I took part in lots of projects that I was very proud of. But my largest project was creating a new environmental education website that was based on educating people about invasive species. Definitely the biggest achievement for me was when I got to hear the feedback coming from the public about the uses of the website; they had got much better use of the website, and also the number of people using it had increased rapidly since my changes.
Sarah Fullwood: For me my main achievement is the feasibility report I am working on for the company at the minute. This is a report that hopefully will take the company into the future with online videos. I have had the responsibility of researching an American company and the way they’ve done it and saying: this is their business plan, this is their strategy and here’s actually how it could be applied to us.