My name’s Jake Davey and I did 1 weeks work Experience with Whybrow. After A solid year of revision for GCSEs it was refreshing to get more of a feel for what life is like in a work based environment. I have really enjoyed my week here and would defiantly recommend to anyone thinking about doing work experience; I have learnt some key skills not only for surveying and property management, but also for communication at work and the accounts side of a business.
Before entering the building, like anyone would be I was nervous; however these nerves were quickly lost as I was greeted by Andrew and introduced to everyone at Whybrow. I was then shown around the building by Coralie who explained to me about the business and its partners. I spent my first day working with Tom who works in property management, he got me started working on a schedule of dilapidations for the company, this helped me to get to grips with excel which is clearly important in any business. Halfway through the day Mr Boyle who works in the careers department at my school came in to see how I was doing which was a nice surprise.
After this I went to a property with Tom which was an old Lloyds Bank. Here we inspected the building and prior to this he had worked out that they were going to split the unit into 2. However one side wouldn’t have water, so we had to work out how to get water into the other side of the property, this was very interesting to me. Also we got to look at what goes on behind the cashiers of the bank, for example look at the old safes which were fascinating. I enjoyed this day because it showed me that this job allows you to go out and about, so you aren’t just stuck in the office.
On Wednesday I was working with George whom is also involved in Property management. George and I visited two properties, the first being in Colchester where we met with the Owner of the property and the Contractors who were asked to repair parts of it. This was good because I watched how these parties spoke to each other with regards to work. After this we went to a property in Ipswich and we looked around to see if Carbon Monoxide detectors were present. We got to speak to the tenants of the building and do some problem solving which further helped me to learn about the Job.
On Thursday I worked with Andrew in the morning who is involved in the professional side of the job. He got me to work on an acquisition for him where I wrote up about properties on the market which Andrew was looking to introduce to his client. This was to help in the future. I enjoyed this because I felt like I was actually helping the company. Then in the afternoon I worked with Coralie who introduced me to a system called Agency Pilot which stores the data of every property they manage. After this I did some formatting for brochures which I was able to do in the CEO’s office as he was on Holiday which was fun. Then I helped Jade out with the Twitter of the company.
Friday was my last day and I started the day working with Abby who does all the accounts for the company. This was good for me because I’m also very interested in this as a potential career option. Abby taught me how to send invoices and also make payments which was a bit scary as it was using the company’s money. She also taught me a lot about economics and how this relates to a company like Whybrow. Now I am onto writing this blog, I have really enjoyed my time at the company not only because everyone was so welcoming but also because I learnt a lot about a future career path that I may want to explore. To conclude, I am so happy that I applied to do work experience at Whybrow and would recommend it to anyone thinking of doing work experience.
