Aidan recently completed a Year in Industry as a Sales Operations and Marketing analyst for the Industrial team at IBM. His role consisted of supporting the Enterprise Sales leader at IBM UK&I for engagement with Industrial business, as well as assisting a team of account executives to develop and execute strategies. We spoke to Aidan to find out about life at IBM.
Run us through a day in your life at IBM?
A day in the life starts at around 8:30am to join the weekly team calls to discuss performance and any “highlights” in the past week (deals signed/events/interesting topics). Then the day is usually followed through with cadence: discussing opportunities with the account executives to see what they’re going to close this quarter and how management can help. Throughout the day there can be various meetings with the team to discuss the strategy of approaching clients (account planning sessions) to admin work (updating our CRM platform). Mondays can be busy, but you’ll always find time to grab lunch with other interns and relax for a while. Throughout the day I would be checking emails and offering support to account executives with tasks, such as market research, pipeline validation and prep work for account planning sessions. We usually finished at around 5:00pm to 5:30pm
What was your biggest achievement at the company?
I facilitated an internal speed-networking session between the account executives and the brand team. The workshop generated many valuable opportunities which were then pitched to clients. I was able to sit in on and help support the account executives and see the whole sales cycle which I found very rewarding.
What is the culture like?
IBM hired around 250 interns, the majority stationed in London. So there was a combination between a somewhat university-style culture amongst the interns and a more professional culture between the team of account executives. My team’s culture in the workplace was fantastic, I was surrounded by highly motivated professionals who were always welcoming and wanted me to actively participate in their projects. I had a vast number of opportunities to enhance my skills and really drive value. For example, I attended several key note speaking events, such as the FT Manufacturing Summit, and was able to see for myself issues affecting our clients. I found this extremely engaging as a lot of IBM's products/services were the solutions to many of the debates around industry 4.0 and how to digitalise the industry.
What advice would you give to Bright Network members who'd be interested in working for IBM?
A year can seem like a long time but do not get comfortable in your role; always be asking for new work and constantly seek out new challenges in the role.
Network, network, network. I found a lot of the work I really enjoyed came from making connections within the organisation and asking them if they have time for a coffee or if I was able to shadow them for a day or two.
Do research before you apply. The application process can contain a lot of stages in a short amount of time, so do not just “wing it”; it can be very competitive.
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