I've just spent most of November in New Zealand so getting back into "work mode" has been proving difficult to say the least, especially as its nice and warm in the southern hemisphere at this time of year.

I had just over 3 weeks off work which is important to me because I like to travel – generally as long as you have your managers permission and give plenty of notice you can have as much time of as you like (obviously within your holiday allowance!) which I've found to be great. I know friends at other companies who sometimes struggle to get more than a couple of weeks off at a time, which isn't the case for Retail IT.

Just before my hols I attended Manchester Careers fair to promote HBOS and the IT scheme in particular. 'Hello' to anybody I met there that’s reading this. Later in December I hope to be helping out at an assessment centre. Its great to be involved behind the scenes in these activities – provides that extra bit of job variety. Believe it or not it also provides opportunities to meet other grads from across HBOS (ie from the different schemes) which is always interesting.

What I've achieved this week…

I thought I would focus this blog around what I've done over the last week:

*Operations handover – spent a long session discussing how the system works, handover plans, warranty periods and support models. I work in an area that delivers new software and the operations guys then keep it running. It's an important part of the project that I manage the relationship with operations and ensure they are happy with what we are delivering.

* Disaster Recovery testing – co-ordinated the testing of our 'DR' solution to ensure that if something went wrong with our primary server we have a 'back-up' for our business users that can be brought online immediately

* Started work on the project implementation plan – sounds dull but its actually quite interesting to plan out how we put a key system live without affecting anything else in the bank - co-ordinated across multiple sites across the UK!

* Went to Alton Towers with my department as part of an away day - and went on all the scary rides!

Probably doesn't sound a lot but I am trying to pick out the key themes in just one week. On top of the preparation for these tasks and the number of other activities that can be carried forward or up coming it can add up to a busy week.

About the scheme

In this blog I thought I would go into a bit more detail around the graduate scheme and how it operates.

Generally, as a graduate you work a series of placements across the business, generally lasting 4 to 6 months. As a graduate you have the opportunity to spend 20% of your time on activities outside of your day-2-day placement (i.e. 1 day a week).

This provides chances to be involved in some of the wider initiatives across the department, go on training courses or take part in a volunteer activities. It also lets you sometimes work with other graduates as small teams to deliver something important to the business.

Some of the recent activities I have been involved in outside my general day job:

* In May our graduate group went and spent a day painting a mural and improving a garden area at a local school, I turned out to be a half-decent artist!

* At the start of the year I was involved a consultancy piece for a team based in Wolverhampton that act as a development centre. I went down with 4 other grads and looked at ways they could improve aspects of their operation based on the knowledge we had gained through our experience and also through talking through with our networks of contacts. We then went back and did a feedback exercise and facilitated questions and answers

* Currently, I am working on a department wide initiative to simplify where line managers need to go if they have an issue to solve, problem to report or question to answer.

* And I'm also doing this blog!

All the above is accommodate into our "20% time", the other remaining time is focused on our placement role – see my other entries for a flavour of what I get up to …

There's a lot to do but variety and wider exposure to these challenges keep things interesting.

In terms of the graduates everybody is easy to get along with, helpful and we socialise fairly often. As a community we meet monthly to discuss what we are working on and what we might like to do coming up. As part of the scheme you also get opportunities to meet other grads from different parts of the business and understand what they do.

I can't think of a better way of getting to know a company and its people than being on a well run grad programme!

I thought I would explain more about my role and give a bit of detail around the aspects I am involved in on a day-2-day basis.

I work in the 'Risk' department of Retail IT, basically this department designs, develops and maintains all the systems used to support the business in balancing risk and operating a regulatory environment – this can include things such as fraud prevention, credit decisioning and anti-money laundering checking.

Given the size of the business some of these systems can be very large and complicated – especially when you get into aspects such as real-time processing.

In terms of my typical activities, normally on a morning I'll come in and pick-up with the support team in India whether there have been any issues with the system batches overnight. Usually things are fine and everything has worked, other times there might have to be follow-on actions to fix any issues or begin to liaise with other teams in HBOS to resolve. I don't technically fix the issues myself but co-ordinate the responses in the various teams and manage the users expectations about when any problems will be resolved.

Later in the day there will typically be a team meeting to catch-up with the latest activities on the project and ensure that what ever phase we are in that we are actively managing the issues.

Currently I am also managing the implementation of the project I am working on – this involves a lot of up front planning to ensure that when we put the new system live it goes in right first time, doesn't affect any other critical systems and that the it meets the users requirements. I may have time blocked out to continue the implementation planning for instance or host a workshop with the users to walk them through the approach and activities for putting this new system live.

Then, depending on what I am involved in outside of my project I may have some 'graduate' work to undertake as part of being a member on the scheme. I'll go into more detail in my next blog about graduate activities but typically we can spend 20% of our time on activities outside of our day-2-day project role.

So, by the time I have got through most of that – plus a lot of emails, phone calls, chats and meetings is usually the end of the day!

I'm writing this today from Edinburgh – my 'base' is West Yorkshire, specifically Halifax at the moment although I have worked at most of our other sites in and around West Yorkshire.

In my current role I get to travel relatively occasionally which adds variety to the job - later this week I'll be in London to meet with one of our suppliers who are working on the project I am involved it so it’s a busy week.

The IT Leadership scheme is structured through a series of placements of which there is a fair degree of flexibility in choosing what you want to do, aligned to your development requirements.

For instance, generally each placement will be in a different area of IT, doing a different type of work and with added responsibility.

I find this is one of the best aspects of the scheme – the variety offered by undertaking different placements and roles is beneficial in building my experience and offering fresh challenges. You also build a network of contacts and friends throughout the organisation – especially helpful when you need a favour or know the right person to speak to!

The Retail IT department is so large and is involved in so many different areas that it's no problem finding something different and new.

A bit about me...

Hi there, just a short one this week – I thought in this blog I would outline a bit of my background and why I chose to work for HBOS.

I started working for HBOS at the end of 2004 in Retail IT on the IT Rapid Graduate Programme. I had come straight from university at Loughborough from doing an engineering degree and before that my A-Levels.

I managed to fit a bit of travelling between graduation and starting work towards the end of the year – it was great to have a long summer knowing that all the hassle of getting a job had been sorted!

I didn't have any prior experience in the IT/finance industry especially but I liked what I had learnt about HBOS and believed the IT/Technology scheme was for me.

I had started the application process pretty early in 2004, towards the end of my final year at university I was in the very fortunate position of having a couple of offers from different companies – in the end I chose HBOS because of the company culture and the opportunities available.

From my assessment days and follow-on events I had opportunities to learn what the company was really like and the quality of people who work here. I didn't necessarily get the same good 'feelings' from the other companies. You really are valued as an employee here and the culture is very open. For me it was one of the deciding factors, in conjunction with the quality of the development programme that made me pick HBOS.

I would recommend making the most of any assessment days/ events/ interviews etc to dig deeper into what the company is really like and understand its culture and working environment.

Andrew

I work in the Retail IT division which develops and supports all of the applications and systems used by the Retail division of the bank. Basically all of the systems that customers come into contact with (e.g. the internet channels, telephone banking, cash machines) or are used by colleagues to serve our customers (e.g. at branches or call centres) are designed and developed by us.

Within Retail IT I'm working towards being a project leader. Basically, I manage aspects of a project from conception ("I've got an idea!") right through to somebody using the end result.

Projects can be small and short right through large complex spanning multiple areas or even across the entire banking industry. Examples can range from re-vamping the Halifax online internet site through to developing a new industry wide faster payments method.

In further blogs I'll go into more detail about what I'm doing in my current role, the culture at HBOS and the people I work with. For now, I'd like to say the following if you're thinking of applying:

* The IT scheme I work on isn't technical – it helps to have some technical knowledge but it's primarily a scheme that’s looking for the future leaders and managers of the organisation, and that’s the way its orientated – for instance other people come and fix my PC if it's broken!

* There's a high level of interaction, both internally within our teams, other business areas and our suppliers – this role is about communication and building relationships with others

* HBOS is a massive organisation – both during and after the graduate scheme there are a wealth of opportunities available to stretch and challenge you

If the above spark your interest then read further and consider applying! If you've got any questions please leave them in the feedback area and we'll try answer them.