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Graduate Lands Consultancy Role With Big Four Company

Tom Millbrow gained first class honours in Business Studies from the University. He completed a 12 month industrial placement at IBM as part of his course and began a consultancy graduate scheme in August 2012. Here, Tom tells his University of Hertfordshire story.

A placement year and work experience

During Tom’s degree, he completed a placement year at IBM UK as an industrial trainee where he assisted a large team of senior colleagues. Tasks included liaising with company clients, producing statistics and running meetings.

IBM trained Tom in a number of areas and he was given the opportunity to take part in extracurricular activities. Tom said: “My most memorable activities were mentoring a local school student, running a 'build a robot day' for local children, presenting to college students and co-running the 'green pioneers' team to improve the environmental initiatives in my office.”

Deciding to do a placement to improve his employability, Tom explained: “I understand that employers are looking for both education and experience and with a placement year it offers this and other benefits such as, the chance to trial a job before committing to a career, paid employment and the chance to apply learning into real life examples.”

Tom added: “Completing a placement year at IBM (and an additional summer internship) has enabled me to secure a graduate role at Deloitte and I believe that without the experiences from my placement to talk about in my interview, this would have been a much harder (if not an impossible) task.”

Current role

Tom is a technology analyst at one of the ‘Big Four’ professional services firms Deloitte, which involves working with different organisations to improve their technology capabilities.

Tom explained: “My position helps the project team to assist with a wide variety of tasks. This could be anything from interviewing a client, managing a project risks or developing a website.”

Tom was offered this full-time position before even starting his final year and is now on a two year programme with Deloitte, where by the end of it he will be ready to be a consultant in the technology industry.

University experience and advice

Tom found his degree experience a good mixture of exams and coursework, which helped him to learn the theory needed in everyday business life along with the practical elements needed for working with clients. Specific modules have also enabled Tom to skip training and have an understanding of lots of business aspects that others within the company are new to.

As advice, Tom believes it is imperative to network and build your experiences from as early as possible. He said: “Always do your best, even when you think it’s not noticed because it helps to build an overall impression that will pay dividends in the future.”

Tom went on to achieve a very high first at over 78 per cent, adding: “During term time, focus on your grades – these are essential to most graduate jobs today, which along with gaining work experience will give you a better chance of working within a Times Top 100 company.”

Find out more

To find out more about studying Business at the University please visit www.herts.ac.uk/courses/subjects/business_and_management/undergraduate.cfm

Tom’s placement and work experience has featured in Graduate Prospects’ October Work Experience and Internships issue http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/146f2a67#/146f2a67/35