Mark O'Neill, Amy Wishart, Emily King and Gary Bell
Mark O'Neill, Amy Wishart, Emily King and Gary Bell
Two business school students were selected for internships with Capita, the UK's leading provider of business process outsourcing, as part of the Strategic Technology Partnership formed by Capita IT Services and Strathclyde University.
As part of the collaboration, Capita offered to run an internship pilot scheme for eight students across the entire business. All third year students across the university were offered the chance to apply for the Capita internship programmes and Mark O'Neill and Amy Wishart were selected from the business school to work for Capita's consulting business.
Mark said, "Capita treated us as fully fledged employees – we were aligned to the Consulting Pathway Practice (CPP) and were given our own personal laptop and mobile phone for the duration for our internship. The CPP is the home of Capita's graduates and early stage consultants. We went through the same training programme as those who had recently joined the business.
"I was extremely fortunate in that I was provided with the opportunity to work as a chargeable consultant on one of Capita's largest client sites. I supported a team working on a Children's Services Transformation Programme in one of London's boroughs by producing a Needs Analysis for a Target Operating Model."
Amy, who is studying International Business with Modern Languages, said, "I was working for the 'Efficiency Exchange' at 'Universities UK' for 6 weeks during my time with Capita. The Efficiency Exchange is an online space for Higher Education Institutions to discover and share knowledge, so one of my tasks was to interview senior members of some HEIs in London to discover how they were managing to operate effectively and efficiently in the changing HE environment." One of her interviews was with Kevin Porter, deputy director of the Royal College of Music which was featured in the Guardian and can be read here.
Mark added, "During our final week, Amy and I were invited to dinner with the company's people director and our line manager. It was on that evening that Amy and I were presented with a job offer in principle to go back and work for Capita after graduating. I knew the internship had gone well based on the feedback I had received from various stakeholders within the business but was overwhelmed when I was offered a permanent role with the company. This was my first experience of an internship and it was the best decision I have ever made. It exceeded my expectations by far and has allowed me to develop and gain vital skills that will be useful in my future career."