Jed Evamy-Jones
University of Leeds
BSc Physics
Read more about the course
The Big Picture
“People always say, don’t they, when you do something like this helps you figure out what you want to do in the future and that’s 100% true.”
Jed began a placement with financial-services company Lloyds Banking Group in June 2015, working in a team as a Credit Risk Analyst. In monitoring financial risk, Jed was very involved with the infrastructure of the team and automation, essentially trying to make life easier for all of the analysts.
The Learning Curve
Jed found that going from university life to work life was a huge change of pace and a shock to the system initially. He had no prior experience in the the role of Credit Risk Analyst and wasn’t using much of the theory he had learned in his degree so far, but after settling in, Jed enjoyed getting to learn more new things and meet lots of new people.
“I did so many new things while also kind of developing skills that will be useful in the future.”
In Jed’s Own Words…
Full video transcription
People always say, don’t they, when you do something like this helps you figure out what you want to do in the future and that’s 100% true. Like I know that I want to work in the kind of finance industry because of the placement, whereas when I started applying for a placement I had no idea where I wanted to work. The main role was Credit Risk Analyst, was the title of the job, but it was…I was actually quite involved with the infrastructure behind the department so you like automation and infrastructure within the team, so I’m trying to make other analysts’ lives easier as well as then also analysing data and spotting trends and reporting on models.
It was a huge change of pace going from uni to work. It’s a bit of a shock to the system you know you have so many new things to learn and it was a completely different area to what I’ve been studying. The 12 months while I was doing my placement were absolutely amazing. Met so many new people and people that I genuinely get on with and am still in contact with, and all these amazing experiences over the year…[I] did so many, so many new things while also kind of developing skills that will be useful in the future. So it’s not… it’s not only about developing skills, you also have this whole side of building a network, and all these connections and people that you meet has a huge benefit to I’d say. That’s kind of 50% of the benefit, all the people that you meet and what you learn from them.
I’ve got a graduate job now so have basically been through the whole process again and having done it the first time this time was so much easier and so much less stressful because I know what the process is like so I can apply early and I can apply to the areas that I wanted to apply in and I knew how the application should be structured and how they–what they wanted for me, and then you also feel far more prepped for the future, whatever you where you go into. You feel like you’ve had a little bit of you know you’ve done a little bit of experience. I personally couldn’t recommend it enough when I came back, [it was] such an amazing experience.
The Next Step
Jed completed his BSc degree at the University of Leeds in June 2017. He now works as part of a fraud-investigation team at the consultancy Deloitte.
“I personally couldn’t recommend it enough… I had such an amazing experience…”
