Being Ourselves, Making a Difference.

Responsibility from the start

When I was at university, I did an Industrial Placement with another organisation and although the experience was great, from speaking to the graduates there, I was under the impression that the scope of their roles was somewhat limited. This is where Accenture came in, I spoke to family and friends about Accenture and they told me how the culture was brilliant and that you were really pushed to succeed and given responsibilities from an early stage. That got me interested in applying and even although I’ve only been here since the end of October and on my first rotation, what they said has already been reinforced.

Even though I’m a graduate I find the door to senior people is always open and get a lot of exposure to senior managers within Accenture Operations which has been brilliant. There’s a real focus on being the best place to work and really pushing graduates on the scheme to the fullest of their potential. Your abilities are stretched, and you’re given early responsibility, but you get all the support you need to develop your career.

Learning the business

For this first rotation (in Operations we have four rotations over two years) I’m working for Accenture Post-trade Processing which is a utility providing a trade settlement service on securities for banks. I’m in service management, which involves providing clients with an independent, consistent and industrialised method of controlling, measuring, and monitoring the service that APTP provides, and to support business delivery teams in the delivery and representation of the Services provided to our clients. Day-to-day we have governance meetings with the client where we review issues, risks and performance metrics including KPI’s and SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). I’m also involved in meetings around initiatives and projects that help to grow and improve the service we provide, and I’ve been able to help on more specific projects around standardising the service management offering - so building a project resourcing model that we can take to potential new clients.

I think the one thing that has stood out for me is that I came here not knowing Capital Markets and with support from my manager and other people I’ve been able to learn and understand the business very quickly. Learning so far has mostly been on-the-job but everyone is very supportive - they want you to learn and they want you to ask questions. In fact, one of the most valuable things I’ve learnt so far, is always ask questions.

Side-of-desk projects

We’re encouraged as graduates to get involved in projects alongside our day-to-day role and during my first month I helped with building a marketing video on Adobe Premier which is something I’d never done before. I signed myself up thinking how hard can it be? It turned out to be quite difficult! But that said, it was good fun and great experience. More recently I’m involved in an initiative called XR for Ops so Extended Reality for Operations and we are creating a VR App to tell the story of our Mobilisation part of the Operations business. I’m not involved in the technical side, that’s something we’re getting the XR studio to do, but I’m involved in the storyboarding behind it and looking at the legal requirements - so more of the architect piece. It’s been really interesting, and I’ve already spoken to the XR Studio Lead to see if I can get involved in more projects in the future.

My advice

My key piece of advice would be to try as many things as you can and be as open as you can – be yourself. Obviously, you will be nervous at the start but by meeting as many people as possible and getting involved you’ll soon overcome those initial nerves, especially as the people in Operations will support you and there’s a real sense of a family culture here.

Discover our graduate opportunities, including our Operations Graduate scheme, by visiting our website.