David Linley, BSc Business Studies (Year in Industry) Graduate and National Grid Graduate Trainee, talks about his time studying at the University of Birmingham. He discusses how the year in industry he completed as part of his business studies degree helped him secure a place on National Grid's Graduate Training Scheme.
Title: Next Steps – BSc Business Studies
Duration: 1.14 mins
Speaker Names (if given): S1 David Linley – Graduate Trainee, Customer Services, National Grid (BSc Business Management – Year in Industry)
S1 At the moment I’m working for National Grid on their graduate scheme. It’s an eighteen month programme and involves three, six month placements which can include anything from customer services all the way through to the operations of the business. The Business School at Birmingham was really helpful for me, especially going into the type of work that I’m in at the moment. I did a lot – I covered a wide range of topics and did finance and law and marketing. There were a lot of different things there that I’ve been able to transfer into the line of business that I’m in. In my third year of university I was offered the chance to do a placement year and I went to National Grid and I really enjoyed my time there, and that’s how I then applied to their graduate scheme to go back.
If I was to advise anybody thinking about university now, I would definitely say do a degree and especially if you get the opportunity to do a placement year because there's a lot of skills that you can learn at university that will transfer when you go into a working environment, and if it wasn’t for the placement that I’d done with National Grid in the first place, I don’t think I’d be where I am now on their graduate scheme.
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