Anna-Maria Rusanova, BA (Hons) Events Management, placement at IBM
Working as part of an Enablement Team at IBM in London was the greatest opportunity of my life, as well as a true pleasure.
I鈥檓 proud to say I鈥檝e been able to provide true value and, as a result, my placement has been extended.
As I proved my skills and passion, as well as my willingness to do more, my responsibilities significantly expanded taking my role to a much higher level.
Throughout the year I have been responsible for creating and maintaining numerous webpages, completely changing the look and feel of my team鈥檚 internal website. I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator to be able to design promotion materials, logos, banners, workbooks and more. My team used to take weeks to send requests to an external designer, whereas I was able to save time and money, as well as put my team in control of all changes.
I was part of a team that planned and delivered a three-day event to the entire Software Client Leaders population in Europe. One of my main contributions was modernising and improving social interaction by creating a virtual space using the IBM Conference App. I was responsible for encouraging the use of the app throughout the event which led to increased networking.
A favourite aspect of my year was being involved in planning and executing an agile session in Sweden, as well as the delivery of several Design Thinking workshops across Europe.
These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. I also completed 130 hours of learning from IBM workshops, courses and online materials that have helped me understand myself and develop major skills, such as effective communication, presenting to executives, social selling, Java programming, video editing and more鈥�
A favourite aspect of my year was being involved in planning and executing an agile session in Sweden, as well as the delivery of several Design Thinking workshops across Europe."
IBM on Anna-Maria鈥�
鈥淣othing seems to be too聽difficult for Anna-Maria, she simply smiles and says I will look at it, then comes back聽with a solution!聽To come from university into this highly complex, fast-moving environment and perform at this very high level is truly exceptional.
"In order to keep Anna-Maria in IBM, we have done something unusual and extended the student contract post-placement, which means she can work on an hourly basis as her studies allow 鈥撀爑ntil she can hopefully come back full-time as a graduate in sales or consultancy.鈥�