Stephen Dowdall- Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley was attracted to Club 21 with the University of Glasgow due to the opportunity it affords to bring in highly educated and skilled students. They add value to our business while we give them the opportunity to develop, understand our firm and build a relationship with us with a view to potentially returning to work with us following the completion of their studies.

The placement opportunity was within the Projects Group of Morgan Stanley. We provide solutions to any office wide problems, manage all projects centrally and support new initiatives. Key focus areas for the year were introducing a European-wide Six Sigma programme and a Global IT in addition to smaller projects.

Club 21 sent seven strong CVs with appropriate skills for the placement. Of these we interviewed three before selecting the most appropriate candidate. An important factor in our decision was the placement student having strong IT skills, the ability to cope with a steep learning curve and excellent communication skills to work quickly and effectively with numerous areas simultaneously.

From a management perspective, I had a weekly meeting with the placement student. In preparation for this, the student prepared a summary of what he had been working on for that week, any training he had undertaken and key learning points from what he had been involved with. This summary was then fed into the Club 21 Placement Learning Diary that we review on a weekly basis. Prior to the student starting, we prepared a training plan. This was a shortened version of one we use for new starts in the Projects area.

Feedback from all those the student interacted with was excellent. Common feedback was: adding value, enthusiasm, professional, good communicator, strong IT skills, diligent. The value the student added to the business and the impact he made has led to us retaining his services on a part-time basis when he returns to university.