Placement Portfolio
- Amelia Haigh
- Jan 11, 2021
- 20 min read
Below I have outlined my Key Objectives in terms of my personal and professional development for my time at Siemens. I have discussed how I planned to achieve these objectives through exploring the methods I could use. I will refer to these skill based objectives throughout this portfolio to show how I developed them.
Key Objective 1: Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment
Explanation & Method: To complete this learning objective while at Siemens, I will ensure that I first find opportunities for me to practice and improve on this skill. I plan to use the work social media, Yammer, to look for any opportunities that I may be able to seize. For example, I have seen that staff often use Yammer to look for help and ask for volunteers for events and to publicise the events taking place.
Another method for finding these opportunities is to utilise the time I have in our weekly team meetings and my one-to-one monthly meetings with my manager. During this time, I can ask about any opportunities for me to present. If there are no opportunities available immediately, then as long as I make it known that it is something, I am interested in doing, then those members of my team will be able to inform me if they ear of something.
In terms of then achieving the specific objective, increasing my confidence when presenting, in one sense I will make sure that I continually get exposure through the methods mentioned above, as the slightly cliché saying “practice makes perfect” is actually very true. For example, when I was looking for a placement, the first few interviews were nerve-wracking, however each time I felt it get easier. By the time of my Siemens interview, I was hardly nervous at all and thus my interview and assessment were successful and went very well. So, if I apply this same logic of repeating a certain activity, like presenting, again and again until I become comfortable – then I will achieve my objective.
Key Objective 2: Attend customer meetings, thus improving my professional communication skills
Explanation & Method: As my role here involves Business Development, I will be working to secure and maintain customer relationships for Siemens along side different teams within the company. To increase my exposure and experience while here for 12 months, my aim is to get into face to face meetings with any of the customers we do work with. This is because communication between email and working ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak, is only one dimension of communication skills in the professional world. Conducing yourself in person in front of a customer in a professional way is another dimension and can require more thought. Therefore, to achieve this I plan to work at the highest standard I can, in an attempt to impress those, I am working around, leading to them inviting me to the customer meetings. If I make myself clearly capable of handling customers and execute a highly impressive and professional standard of work, then hopefully they will want me to attend other meetings. As well as this, as Siemens are quite inclusive and open to enabling the development of their staff, I will make it known to those I am working with that it is a wish of mine to attend customer meetings. This will hopefully ensure that I will be able to attend customer meetings in the future. Through doing this and being in a highly professional and somewhat sensitive environment, the more I attend and the more experience I get, the better my professional communication will become.
Key Objective 3: Improve my technical knowledge of Siemens products
Explanation & Method: Although my role here at Siemens is Marketing and Business Development, due to the fact that Siemens is one of the largest engineering and manufacturing companies in the world, I feel that it is very important for me to be familiar with the technologies and products that they offer. This will not only aid me with KO2, as the more technical knowledge I have, the better my communication with customers will be, but also will help me in my day to day job as I come across technical language and work with engineers and product specialists. To achieve this key objective, I can utilise the online training portal available to all Siemens employees, and specifically focus on new products to gain an understanding. As well as this, I feel that the more events I attend like Innovate East and IMHX, that have recently taken place, the more I will pick up technical language and an understanding of what we offer. As my learning style is a more ‘hands on’ approach I feel that the best way for me to achieve this goal is through conversations and events as mentioned. For example, at IMHX, which you will be able to read about in my placement journal below, I joined up with one of my colleagues as he walked around the stalls and asked very specific questions to find potential customers. This gave me great insight into how best to do this and I feel I picked it up quicker than for example reading a document explaining best practices.
Key Objective 4: Experience less of my comfort zone and more of my stretch zone
Explanation & Method: While this may be more of a general objective, I feel it is an important one for my own personal development and also for my 12 months at Siemens to be impactful. The idea that you do not learn in your comfort zone is something we are taught throughout University, but only something I have really internalised in the run up and the beginning of my placement. Therefor I will make sure that I am always doing just that little bit, or a lot, extra to make sure that I feel I am being challenged, and thus learning with each step of the way.
To do this I plan on volunteering for any extra opportunities for example; running events internally, attending external events, helping with projects and tasks, being willing to take on tasks that I may have no experience with, or that are slightly out of my depth.
Of course I will ensure that I do not take on too much in that I enter the ‘risk zone’, but enough to feel challenged and to know by the end of the year that I have done and taken part in as much as I could have.
August
My first week of placement started with receiving health and safety briefing and training, a tour of the office, introduction to my team and I was also given work laptop and work mobile. Much of my first month was spent doing online training on all of the important areas of working at Siemens. This included training modules such as; Digital Enterprise, Digitalisation, Industrial security and Cyber security to name a few.
Handed a small research project looking at the possible effects of 5G on the industry, specifically looking at what 5G could do for Siemens.
I saw an opportunity on our work social media regarding being a brand ambassador for Siemens. I put myself forward for this exciting change and looked forward for the chance to help rebrand Siemens on social media and through events and encourage young people to apply for job roles with Siemens.
September
I travelled to Ipswich in the afternoon for the Innovate east event the next day. Innovate east is a water management event, that mainly brings together people from the industry from East Anglia Water and Essex and Suffolk Water. The event was over 3 days, however I attended for just the first day and went to the sprint; “Can digital twins help improve water quality management in distribution systems?” which was sponsored by Siemens. I was able to network with people within the industry, learnt a lot about what water quality management involves and how complex it is and brainstorm ideas about how to improve water quality and risk management using the latest technology. I also wrote a blog post on my experience at the event which was posted on the events website. This really aided me in working towards Objective 3 (Improve my technical knowledge of Siemens products), as I began my learning regarding some of the technology used by Siemens.
A colleague and I planned and carried out climate change awareness week in the office. I designed most of the posters which was highly enjoyable as it allowed me some creative freedom. The climate change themes we decided to focus on were; climate change refugees, the problem with plastic, rising sea levels, how reducing meat can fight climate change, how implementing re-usable coffee cups has reduced our CO2 as a company and finally we did a knowledge table in the canteen. We put something new up from the ideas every day from Friday 20th until the 27th.
IMXH Intralogisitcs event, Birmingham, attended talks such as “the intersection of Digital Twins, AI and Robotics for Logistics” given by Alexander Harvey from Ocado Technology, and “This is forward: The Logistics of being more sustainable” by Clare Bottle from Coca-Cola. This event again helped me with Objective 3 (Improve my technical knowledge of Siemens products), as I was able to see first hand how Siemens promote their products at events.
Attended an SDI workshop (Strengths Deployment Inventory), looking at what your ‘colour’ is based on some research and questionnaires etc. I found this highly insightful and it was made relevant to work life as it gave tips on how to better get along with people who are ‘opposite’ to you. I found out from taking part in this training that my Motivational Value System comes under what is referred to as 'blue', as can be seen below.
October
Attended a career hurdles event where a panel of directors and managers and the CEO, Jurgen, spoke about how they got to their positions etc. This was very interesting and quite inspiring in the sense that all of the people on the panel did not have a necessarily ‘easy’ journey to the positions they are in now, and some of them never even planned to be there. It showed me that hard work pays off and even when things go wrong and make things hard, not to give up.
For the customer pitch that I began working on in partnership with the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing) team, I drove to York for the presentation and meeting in Tadcaster, where the customers office is, the next day. I handed over the document to the customer and watched as the presentation, sales pitch and live demos were carried out by the Siemens team. This situation really aided me with both Key Objective 1 (Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment) and Key Objective 2 (Attend customer meetings, thus improving my professional communication skills). Not only did I experience presenting something I had worked on to a board of professionals where the stakes were very high, but also through this experience I experienced the level of professional communication necessary in these environments.
Attended a careers event at the University of York as a brand ambassador for Siemens, encouraging the University students to play Arcade games developed by Siemens and consider an internship/graduate scheme with Siemens.
I also became a STEM ambassador and Volunteered at the Science and industry museum. Attracting people to the Siemens stand to discuss what we do, and promote STEM to the children and encourage them to consider Siemens as a workplace in the future.
Attended ‘Reframe Women in Tech 2019’ conference in Manchester city centre. Attended a fellow colleague talk on industry 4.0 and how we have got here. It was great to see her giving a keynote speech as she started on the Grad Scheme at Siemens and through events and exposure etc has got herself to that position. This really inspired me to try and follow a similar journey. Going to this events really aided me with Key Objective 4 (Experience less of my comfort zone and more of my stretch zone) as I did not know anyone else there at the beginning so it required me to step out of my comfort zone for the sake of personal and professional development.
November
I attended my first intern training course; ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ – a full day training event. Focused on how to be proactive and think with a win-win mindset. This was interesting but felt a little bit rushed, I wish there had been perhaps another day to go through everything in more depth. That said it is a good reminder to have a positive, focused outlook on life.
Attended a ‘Lean-in’ circle on ‘impostor syndrome’, this can be briefly explained as the negative voice in your head telling you that you are only in your current position because of luck, not because you worked hard etc. This was a very insightful experience and networking event too as I met the new CEO and was also able to speak to the women leading the event and let them know I would be happy to help in any future events. This also led to me feeling more confident about posting my blog as the final task was to write on a yellow piece of card “what you would do if you were not scared” and I wrote ‘post my blog’. So, I finally did it on linked in and on the Siemens blog site, Ingenuity.
On the 13th & 14th I was at the Smart Factory Expo 2019 event talking to customers and taking leads for any customers that were interested in learning more about our products. The main things we were showcasing was virtual commissioning and digital twins, at first my knowledge was very limited, but after asking for a basic explanation and listening in on how the other sales members spoke to their customers about it, I soon picked it up and became increasingly confident. In the end we picked up about 50 leads which will be coming to me in the following weeks. This event was highly beneficial for me with Objective 3 (Improve my technical knowledge of Siemens products) and Key Objective 1 (Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment) and was highly beneficial to my development.
Found out on the Friday that we had won the customer opportunity that I have been working on - which was of course brilliant news and is a great achievement for the company (worth £8.6 million) and for my personally to have been a part of that team.
December
Had a further meeting about the new customer win and I began to learn more about and understand my role as a project management leader for the opportunity.
My placement supervisor came into the office on the Friday to talk about how I am finding the placement so far, if I am struggling or what challenges I am facing etc. This went well, and it was great to be able to show him how I am thriving here and really enjoying it. He also met with my line manager, Javed, and our team manager, Sue and I had positive feedback. I also mentioned that I had completed a blog about my first 3 months at Siemens, which he asked me to send to him and they may be putting on the uni website.
Volunteering day at cash for kids, collecting and packing up Christmas presents for under privileged children in the Manchester area.
January
On the 9th I spent the day at an OEM Team Meeting in Lincoln where I got to see sales insights for Q1 and see how the new CRM Dash tool can be used and is being used by members of the sales team. I also had the opportunity to do my own, small presentation about my role within the team (focused around the customer opportunity) and how I have added to the team, what I have been involved in etc. This was yet another opportunity to showcase my talents and the things I have been involved in so far. This will have further helped me on my mission to getting my face known in the company and by managers to solidify my position here. There was a comment made in the meeting regarding my making myself invaluable to the company which was a great boost showing me I am doing the right thing.
We had the monthly NEXT-UK meeting this week, in which we discussed the publicity of NEXT and how we could potentially improve it. One of the ideas was bringing back a monthly newsletter that used to be done by a member who has since left Siemens. They asked if anyone would be willing to take this job up, and I willingly put myself forward. I enjoy writing and have been getting more and more into blogging and feel that it is the perfect way to continue improving my writing skills and also ‘get my name out there’ even more. Taking this on really helped with Key Objective 4 (Experience less of my comfort zone and more of my stretch zone) as, even though it was something i enjoyed, it would mean taking on more work and also having my writing read throughout the company, which was somewhat of a pressure.
On Wednesday I attended a digital sales push workshop, ran by a marketing manager from the HQ in Germany. The main points covered included; Team workshop to set up digital sales push team and 6 months plan
Modern selling with LinkedIn sales navigator – blueprint for regions
Sales pipeline increase by customer focused demand generation campaign design. We also discussed the success and effectiveness of video marketing as opposed to generic email marketing. This was highly insightful for me, especially to be in a meeting full of managers, it was very eye opening for me in regard to how decisions are made regarding how to run a campaign and decided what new marketing techniques to be used to capture customers.
On Thursday I was visiting our customer with the technical and marketing team, to begin discussing their marketing techniques going forward and what their key visions/objectives and goals are for the future partnership. I really enjoyed this meeting as it has been my first marketing strategy meeting with an external customer. This allowed me to see how my degree would play into the real working world, and work on Objective 2 (Attend customer meetings, thus improving my professional communication skills) and further develop my skills on how to conduct myself in a professional environment, especially with customers.
At the beginning of the week I was asked by Sue, our team manager, if I would be happy to talk at the Digital Industries Sales conference taking place at the end of February. She had pencilled out a 45-minute slot for Simon Keogh (manager in DI) and me to talk and present on SieSales (our CRM) and the lead management process. I of course said yes, as this will add to my list of things achieved and also will help with my Key Objective 1, increasing my confidence when public speaking even more.
February
On Thursday I attended an Emotional Intelligence Lean in circle ran by Yasmine, this was very interesting. As a group we were asked to think about how we would react in certain situations such as; you are presenting an idea in a presentation at work, another colleague points out flaws in your idea and says it is unrealistic…what do you do?” and etc. We were then asked to split off into pairs and talk about how we would initially react, and then again how we would react again if we were actively being emotionally intelligent. This was very insightful into the different ways you can react to a situation, and also taught me more about what emotional intelligence is all about.
On Tuesday, Rav, Yasmine and myself ran the inclusion and diversity event for NEXT UK, the event consisted of the following; In groups, the individuals taking part were required to look through the list of privileges and decide amongst themselves which ones were most important, and which ones they would buy. Examples of privileges they could buy included; "Walking at night without stares, fear or anxiety about my safety" "Having enough food at home, so my family does not have to skip meals" "Applying for a job without worrying that my identities (race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability) will hold me back." Once the groups had chosen their limited amount of privileges, we discussed what struggles and challenges they faced when deciding what they would purchase. I really enjoyed running this session and felt like it brought out some great discussions amongst the participants, and it greatly improved my confidence when presenting (Key Objective 1).
Over Thursday and Friday, I took part in a Business Influencing Skills training course, one of the 3 training courses provided by Siemens to their interns. Over the 2 days we looked at how to hold effective meetings, write powerful emails and how to structure a meeting agenda to get the most important details down in the first 90 seconds. This has been really enjoyable and I feel that I am taking a lot of key skills away with me, the main points being;
- The key differences between a meeting involving gaining agreement, and a meeting to generate ideas, and how to structure your agenda accordingly
- Key objection handling skills when presenting an ideas
- Better planning and structuring of agendas, pre-meeting
- Improved structuring of emails with clear purpose, benefit and content layout.
I will definitely be carrying these skills into the rest of my time at Siemens, and further into my career. This training also encouraged me to continue my training in this area in the following months and I thus completed a business writing skills training course;
This training course helped me with making progress on Key Objective 1 (Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment) and Key Objective 2 (improving my professional communication skills). This is because it gave me the training and tools necessary to plan for these situations, and have confidence in how I would be conducting myself in these situations in the future.
Ran and attended our NEXT Uk workshop on digitalisation, encouraging the young people in the office to think about how technology is affecting the way we work, and what changes we might want to see in the workplace using the technology that we have.
I was invited to speak at the Digital Industries Sales Conference, in front of 120 employees of Siemens, from Directors to managers to members of the sales team. I spoke for 40 minutes about the lead management process and gave a live demonstration on how to use the platform.
Upon reflection, this experience was the biggest aid for me achieving Key Objective 1 (Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment) and Key Objective 4 (Experience less of my comfort zone and more of my stretch zone). As I mentioned I spoke in front of many managers, and i was the youngest person speaking over the two days. The experience was honestly invaluable to my growth, and receiving a lot of good feedback from work colleagues and my managers afterwards really boosted my confidence. For myself also, I learn much better when out of my comfort zone, and by doing something - so this was perfect for me to achieve these objectives.
March
Attended UKWA 2 day conference in Chester which looked at all things Logistics, ranging from environmental sustainability requirements, to expansion and growth of businesses and warehouses. Although this was less specific regarding Siemens products, this conference helped me with Objective 3 (Improve my technical knowledge of Siemens products) because it improved my general technical knowledge, and I learnt a multitude of things about logistics which I am sure will be useful in the future.
On Friday we had students from Spain visit the Siemens office to get a feel of the working world. I volunteered to attend the meet and greet element of their trip and talk to them about their future job prospects, and do some interview training.
Being a STEM Ambassador for Siemens, I volunteered to go to a STEM Festival at Manchester Academy High School with a couple of my colleagues. We spent the day on the Siemens stand running fun interactive activities for the high schools students to take part in, learn some science and learn about who Siemens are!
Started working from home due to the Coronavirus outbreak and discussed with the Siemens Brand Ambassadors team how we can promote Siemens as a good company through working from home and how they have supported us. We came up with the idea of taking a picture of our set up and how Siemens enabled us to work from home.
April
I got through to the 2nd round of the Intern of the Year application, after first submitting a written document answering questions regarding excellence in the workplace, how I have supported Diversity and inclusion and also worked towards sustainability. The 2nd part of the application was to work on a video submission, showing further evidence about how I achieved the above points, which can be viewed below;
The business development team carried out 11 interviews for the next business development intern spot, which I was invited to also sit in on and ask any questions and tell the candidates all about my role with Siemens. This taught me a lot about what employers look for in candidates and what comes across and positive and negative in an interview. Being able to carry out the interviews along side my managers really made me feel empowered, and I got to share my experiences with the candidates and ask them any questions I thought would be useful to know. After this, we had a team meeting to review each candidate, and slowly pick our favourite for the next year.
May
I was invited to a ‘new normal co-creation brainstorm’ session, due to my posting of blogs on the Siemens blog site, ingenuity, specifically my blog ‘Working from home: Madness or Mercy?’ in April. We discussed the new normal of working from home, and how we might write blogs about this, to share our experiences and let people know they are not alone.
I also had the wonderful experience of running Siemens first ever online Lean-in circle! I have already mentioned attending lean in circles at the Siemens office on Imposter Syndrome and Emotional Intelligence, but I finally had the chance to run my own. Also, due to the new lockdown, we had to figure out how to still run the circle, but virtually.
Back in March when my co-worker, Janet, and I began planning our Lean-In Circle "Thriving in times of change", we had no idea how much things were about to literally change, and after only meeting face-to-face once, we found ourselves working from home. That said we were able to plan and successfully run the online workshop and had around 40 people attend!
We covered;
❓ What it means to thrive
❓Why we react differently to change,
❓ What happens scientifically when we experience change,
💬 Then we broke off into sub-groups within Teams to discuss;
- What has been the most significant change in your life and how did you deal with it? &
-What are your dreams and what would you do, if you were not scared?
✅ Finally we finished off with some top tips on how to thrive, not just survive!
Through running this lean-in circle I was able to use utilise skills built up in regards to Key Objective 1 (Increase my confidence when presenting in a professional environment) and Key Objective 4 (Experience less of my comfort zone and more of my stretch zone). I was able to be confident in my presenting, and really enjoyed leading the event. Of course, through doing this event I continued to build on these skills.
June
I attended a strength, change and resilience workshop. This was the 3rd and final intern training I took part in and it looked at ‘owning your career’ and having a ‘growth mindset.’ The training mainly looked at how we want to grow both personally and professionally with a focus on our '7 strengths' that can be seen below. These were taken from the results of a short test we took before the training course, so we could focus on them throughout. We got a workbook that allowed us to carry out activities where we assessed our goals and what we want to grow in and achieve in the future.
July
In early July I was invited to be on a panel for a global HR conference which was taking place on line. This was as part of the Global HR Conference taking place this week, and was a wonderful opportunity to discuss the New World of Work. We discussed how Siemens may look in the next 10 years, how we can increase and improve Diversity and Inclusion, and our love for Siemens and what our experiences have been so far, working for such a "cool" company. This really boosted my confidence as I shared the panel with Siemens CEO, Carl Ennis and the Global Head of Human Resources, Alexander Senn. For this event I took what I had previously learnt about public speaking from times such as the Digital Industries Conference that I spoke at. Also, when given the opportunity I agreed straight away as I understood how valuable it would be to my growth both personally and professionally and especially Objective 1 and Objective 4.
August
As August marked the 1 year of my placement, it should have been my final week. However, I was asked to stay on full time for a couple more weeks to help with the intern settling in and also to train her in taking over my previous roles. This was another learning curve for me as I realised it is okay to know how to do something and understand something, but you need to be able to explain it and demonstrate it to someone. I also learnt that doing so really solidifies learning and makes you more confident in what you are teaching.
September
This week I was delighted to find out that I had been awarded Intern of the Year for 2020 and would be receiving the award on the 10th at the Virtual Early Careers Celebration Gala. This has of course been my biggest achievement to date at Siemens and made me so proud of all the hard work I had put in on my placement, it really made it worth it.
I am also able to stay at Siemens part time while going back to university. This is a great honour to know the company finds me valuable enough to want to keep me in the company, and it is great for me to continue to develop at Siemens, even if it's just one day a week.
Upon reflection of my time at Siemens on placement, I would say that the main two workplace skills that I developed were from Objective 1, presenting in a professional environment, and Objective 2, improving my communication skills in a professional environment. This is due to the fact that I had many opportunities to go to events, speak to customers, present and represent Siemens, and present on things that were interesting to me. Not only this, but I also attended various trainings on developing confidence and utilising business skills.
I am very happy with my progress on my placement, and I can see that I have grown greatly within all of the objectives set out at the beginning and more. This can also be seen as I was awarded with Intern of the Year, showing Siemens recognition of my growth and impact whilst on placement.
Comments