05-12-2016
A Week At Fox Davidson
We thought you might like to hear how our work experience recruit, Edward, got on last week……….
The week I spent with the staff at Fox Davidson was a wonderful experience which was unforgettable. This was my first time ever working in an actual business environment, it was not what I was expecting.
I was expecting white walls with a cubical for each person to work separately in. To my surprise, there were nice warm colours, this made me feel like this place was going to be friendly and inviting. This was the first day and it was scary. I was too frightened to talk to anybody, even with the warm welcome I received. I was assigned my own desk with a computer, right next to Sarah, this made me not feel too alone as I talked to Sarah.
The first job they assigned me was to listen in to some calls while they talked to the clients, while listening I got absorbed into the call as the clients were telling them what their plans were and the very detailed descriptions on what they wanted to do in the future and what they did in the past. After listening to the client, we called a lender to discuss a tricky case. Lastly, I had to do an affordability calculation with various lenders for fake clients to learn how different they can be. That was day one, an experience that made me feel happy but also tired.
Day two was to finish the fact find and recommendations for the fake client. I listened into a call where someone wanted to get a remortgage. Lastly, I packaged another case and finished it. While I was half way into the case, Adam talked to me about what I’ve been doing and asked what I do in college, he was a very friendly person. Before I finished for the day, I asked Sarah about how much a mortgage broker earns and I was surprised. It made me think ‘I would get steak every morning with that pay’ then got home and asked for some steak.
Day three was probably my favourite out of the week as I started talking to all the staff a lot more. For example, when all the girls were talking about wanting to buy new candles (don’t know why they were talking about candles). Adam looked so confused and told me his idea for scented candle. It was a steak scented one and he said ‘I bet no one would ever think of this idea, this will make lots of money’ I said that a company in America had already done this, so he went on google and found it while scrolling through other scented candles like locker room scent. He then told me about a few movies (very old ones) and told me that I should watch them as ‘homework’ but I misplaced the note in one of my trousers. While everyone was joking around and looking at a winter wonderland they were planning to visit for Christmas, they were also typing away and working fast.
I then got a job to analyse and interpret some client data of completed mortgages in Bristol and I plotted pins on a large wall map to get a visual aspect of what I was analysing. It was a busy day and lots of cake, this was because Sarah partner Wesley was going to get married in three days so they were having a little cake for the special occasion.
I got to listen into some initial inquires which Adam was taking. I was very impressed with how Adam talked to his clients, even though he had never talked to them before he talked to them like he’d known them for a few years already, his personality when talking was also very professional as while he talked like he knew them he also got all the important information that he needed and even made a person who was quiet at the start, warm up and made him feel welcome and let him talk and open up. I then helped the administration department with some scanning and sorting, I got the hang of the scanning very quickly but I was horrible at the sorting.
On day four, when I finished pinning the data onto the wall map, I went onto word and wrote up a report on the analysis and colour coding of each pin. Sarah said they would use the data to help identify where they might target marketing for clients in Bristol. At the end of day four, I really felt like I helped the company in a positive way and contributed to helping them grow.
Day five is the day that I am writing the blog as they wanted to know how I felt about my week of work experience. This was their first time letting someone do work experience with them so they wanted to know what went well so that they can focus on it to improve the experience for the next student wanting to work with them for a week. On Friday, it was a more relaxing day as they are not so busy on Fridays so everyone can wear casual that day. The week I spent with the staff at Fox Davidson was a wonderful experience which is unforgettable.
P.S. I thought I would be making them tea and coffee but it ended up with them offering to make me tea instead, it made me feel wanted.
