Many of the degrees at Leeds Beckett offer the opportunity to take a year out working in Industry. After a tough recruitment process, and many applications, I was thrilled to be successful in securing a year supporting IT at ALDI in the Business Intelligence and Reporting team.

The level of trust given to me from the start was amazing. After my first month I was compiling data to present to directors on a weekly basis. Despite this responsibility, I had support around me from all members of the team. The team were welcoming and happy to help me settle in. They also helped explain things I was unsure of.

As time progressed, the projects I was working on began to expand as my workload increased. I was involved in a range of projects with the majority of my time being spent developing automatic dashboards for director level and above. I was trusted to gather requirements and work alone to produce visualisations to display data as part of a useful summary. Once these were developed, the Managing Director of IT for ALDI UK & IRE complimented me personally on this work. It was a great feeling knowing I had actively contributed to the business.

ALDI made me feel valued by investing time and money to put me on training courses throughout my placement. I completed an SQL course, a resilience and wellbeing course, time management training, communication courses and I was able to gain a qualification in ITIL Service Management. These courses allowed me to develop as an individual and feel better prepared to tackle my final year.

I spent some time on offsite visits to improve my understanding of the wider business and how it works. I spent a day touring the newly opened warehouse, which gave me an understanding of how it worked and how the reporting I was involved in was used on site. I also went to Germany to visit the International IT Office. I spent several days there and explored various departments and got the opportunity to talk with a number of people about their roles within ALDI.

Towards the end of the year, my latest project was to redesign the procedure for various teams in the office. A colleague and I created a new process for all reports to follow. It allowed me to apply the knowledge I gained at university into the real world.

Overall, my placement with ALDI was incredible, and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to return to following my final year at university.