Meet Anthony, Finance Graduate

With the help of the Finance New Entrants Team, the Summer Internship was tailored to my interests and I was placed within a finance governance team which held the responsibility for ensuring that projects received correct approval prior to receiving funding. On top of this, throughout the 10 weeks I was able to receive exposure to different parts of the business. I always felt welcome to ask questions, have conversations with senior leaders and ask for help from older graduates.

The friendly culture at Network Rail and the clear career development opportunities I discovered during my Summer Internship made me choose to come back for the Graduate Scheme (and to write my dissertation on the social value that rail connectivity can create!).

With Network Rail being such a large organisation, a day in the life within finance can look completely different depending on which team you are in. Helpfully on the Finance Graduate Scheme the first 3 months are spent meeting an array of different teams rather than being on a fixed placement straightaway. This means that you can join a team which best suits your interests and aspirations.

At the time of writing, I am in the Maintenance Reporting Team for a 6-month period. I chose to join this team as I wanted to combine my dual ambitions of understanding how central reporting can provide insight and to get a ground-up experience of the railway by speaking to the engineers that we support. A day-to-day includes analysing maintenance reports, cross-checking planning documents and presenting findings.

Alongside this, we spend a large time on the scheme studying for CIMA exams at college, which is helpful in supporting the foundation of the work we do. Furthermore, there are plenty of other projects which you can do alongside regular placements which I will expand on in later sections.

The graduate scheme has improved both my technical and soft skillset. Whilst the importance of learning technical skills is made clear by way of both CIMA and placement requirements a lot of emphasis on the Finance Graduate Scheme is focused on developing softer skills. Soft skills underpin the evolving requirements of a finance professional in the modern age and the scheme fosters these through externally hosted workshops on key behaviours e.g., spontaneity, regular presentation practice days and attending networking events.

Furthermore, through the supportive network of mentors, buddies, line and placement managers scheme has helped me to understand my strengths and weaknesses. By giving me opportunities to leverage my strengths and focus on my weaknesses I have been able to improve my skills.

Through my Maintenance Reporting Team placement, I have worked on establishing a baseline for Maintenance spending throughout Control Period 7 (What is a Control Period? (youtube.com)), as well as building a master document to sit behind Maintenance reporting data which is helping us to create more specific insights.

Away from my placement I have been able to work on a few projects.

Firstly, I was accepted onto the Digital Innovation for Collaboration in Engineering competition and through this I worked alongside other graduates from across the industry to solve a challenge statement related to the 4th industrial revolution.

Another project I am working on is looking at implementing a new collaboration tool into the project management space and in particular highlighting financial efficiencies that might sit alongside this. This project came off the back of a conversation I had with a senior leader at a conference, demonstrating the variety of opportunities available at Network Rail.

There is ample support from both within the scheme and across wider Network Rail. I have personally felt great support from my network of line and placement managers, mentor and buddy. The Finance Graduate Scheme has a very open culture and you are encouraged to share improvements and these are quickly acted upon.

Furthermore, Network Rail’s variety of employee networks e.g., CanDo (Disability) are great and help to share how we can all support each other to do the best work.

Amongst the great challenges at Network Rail is simply trying to learn about all the great and different things that we do. Network Rail has 40000+ employees and sometimes this makes it hard to find the right person if you need help with a specific task. On the other hand, it also means that we have a whole array of specialties in-house.

For the Digital Innovation for Collaboration in Engineering competition my team were able to find a stakeholder within Network Rail (after a lot of searching) who was responsible for a specific piece of artificial intelligence within the business. He was able to support us in answering our challenge statement and we subsequently won the competition with his support.

So although it is challenge, the size of Network Rail means that there is usually someone who can help you!

I particularly enjoy bridging the technical content I have learnt at college with industry specific knowledge I have learnt from my placements. Using my knowledge and skills to help solve challenges that we have within our industry motivates me as I am helping to drive Network Rail to be Better, Simpler and Greener.

I also enjoy investigating resources to help understand situations better. Network Rail has lots of information to go through and I enjoy reading so I can gain context before delving deeper.

Prior to joining Network Rail as a Summer Intern I thought that the constraints of working in an arms-length government body would be very frustrating, given the issues that I had studied at University e.g., regulatoin.

However, it has instead created opportunities. For example, I have been able to meet with and work alongside people from across the industry e.g., DfT. This has not only helped me to expand my network, but also understand how all the parts fit together. This is especially relevant given the changes that are expected across the industry.

Resilience is key, as there will always be more rejections than offers. However, each time you are unsuccessful be sure to reflect on how you could have done things differently.

Secondly, try to target applications so that you can give each of them your full energy. A half-hearted application will be noticeable and that is the first requirement that companies are looking for.

Research the company, and demonstrate that your knowledge, skills and behaviors are aligned with their vision and values. For example, show how you handled a situation with a key focus on making things “simpler”.

My initial application for the Summer Internship which led to the Graduate Scheme was during the Covid pandemic. Whilst I initially found robotic video interviews daunting I was able to improve with practice. The assessment centre was very well organised and on reflection the tasks were appropriate to assess suitability for the role.

I received a phone call from the HR Team to let me know I was successful very soon after and the onboarding process started straightaway. From then on I was in close contact with a buddy who was a few years ahead on the scheme and the Finance New Entrants Team so the induction