The Careers and Employability Service offer a fantastic bursary for students. The B-KEW bursary is a great opportunity for students to claim back money on out-of-pocket travel expenses for undertaking unpaid work experience (for the first three weeks or 120 hours of work) or for a training event.
Ryan Beecheno, a second year BSc Financial Economics student, was one of the bursary’s recipients this year which meant he could undertake work experience during the summer. Ryan has written a reflective blog on his work experience. Which you can read below:
My work’s week experience at Octopus Investments commenced on the 10th July 2017, I gained this work experience technically through the university because it was a friend who I met whilst in first year who help me arrange this via their mum (Jane Hart).
This work experience was incredibly helpful because it was my first ever work experience with the additional benefit it was a sector I was hugely interested in as it related to my chosen degree: Financial Economics. During my short time spent at the firm I couldn’t believe how much I learned in the week mainly due to the organisation prior to my arrival by Jane Hart who had arranged for me to work in a different department every day.
My first day was spent with the Client Relation team, in the morning I spent shadowing a member of the team listening into calls, this is where I learnt the most about the Octopus itself and the products it sold with the client relation team having undoubtedly the most superior knowledge within the company on this aspect. In the afternoon, I spent it with another member of the Client Relation team sifting through and processing feedback whilst improving my computer skills as he taught me and allowed me to process and categorise all this.
My second morning was spent in Octopus property sales support team where they briefly outlined what their job entailed however promptly allowed me to work independently cancelling loan files after explaining the process of how to cancel these files correctly. In the afternoon, I moved to the sales team and shadowed a member of the team who spoke to financial brokers and pushed to complete loans.
On the Wednesday morning, I was with Octopus investment sales support team learning the ins and outs of their job and then creating illustrations (how much return they should expect if they invest X number of pounds with that product) for clients. In the afternoon, I was with a member of the sales team and listened in on his phone calls to potential and current investors.
On the Thursday I spent all day with the AIM (Alternative Investment Market) fund team, it was probably the most interesting day of the week because I gained a understanding of how they run their £1.3 billion pound fund via sitting in on their weekly meeting discussing potential and future investments in the morning and then doing research on a few of these potential investments and giving my opinion which was discussed in length with me on the positives of my research and where to focus more to improve it.
On the final day I was in the Labs team which is their IT team in a sense who are currently designing and implementing online product platforms which was interesting also to see how they were helping the different departments I had been working with the all week.
Overall the work experience was fantastic and I would recommend doing some for sure because it gives great insight into how large companies operate and gives you an opportunity to explore certain fields before actually committing to a full time job in that sector, whilst developing key office skills that will help me in the future after university and it skills which will help me through my studies.