Internships in Business: My time at IBM

Photo by Mikita Yo on Unsplash

Internships are invaluable when deciding on a career, especially one in business. They give you a taste of what your ‘dream job’ is like in the real world and force you to learn whether the job really suits you or not. They may even open up job roles that you didn’t even know existed.

I’m currently in my third month of my 12 month internship at IBM where I work within the Finance practice. I work with a team of 50+ Finance professionals that help transform finance organisations by working to improve the efficiency of their finance processes and creating smart functions with intelligent workflows. I support the whole practice by taking on any initiatives that are thrown my way, including: 

• Creating a weekly management pack
• Tracking Finance campaigns
• Maintaining sales data 
• Organising training sessions 
• Creating the monthly newsletter

Without this role, I would have never had the opportunity to try such a wide breadth of tasks that spanned into departments such as Marketing, Design, Business Administration, Consulting and much more. This internship has also given me a variety of soft skills such as the ability to communicate, willingness to learn, flexibility, time management and collaboration. 

The skills I have learnt so far whilst being at IBM are applicable to nearly any career, not just careers in business. It has taught me how to work successfully in a fast-paced environment where there are many important deadlines to meet. It has taught me about the importance of networking and reaching out to your colleagues if you need help. It has taught me the importance of a healthy work-life balance; I am involved in multiple societies (including the book club and sports society) and attended an in-person meet-up with other interns last month. Finally, even though I have completed my A levels and left school earlier this year, IBM has encouraged me to continue my learning through their own online learning platform where I can take any course I want and become proficient in that field. I couldn’t recommend an internship enough! 

Here are some internship statistics that will make you want to apply to an internship right now:

• Internship experience has been ranked by recruiters as the number one candidate criterion.
• 4/5 students who have had an internship said their professionalism and work ethic were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ improved by the experience
• Graduates with a paid internship are 34% more likely to receive at least one job offer upon graduation.
• Over one-third of UK employers stressed that it was either ‘not very likely’ or ‘not at all likely’ that a graduate with no previous work experience would be successful during their selection process.

Virtual or in person, for a Fortune 500 company or a local business, full-time or just on the weekends, there are lots of different types of internships out there. With a good amount of research, you will find one that is suited to your wants and needs, whatever they may be.