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“The reason I applied to the Telefonica Finance Graduate program is because Telefonica has always been in The Times' top 20 biggest companies to work for.”

 

My name is Gavriel Debson and I’m on the Telefonica Finance Graduate Scheme. I studied Aeronautical Engineering at Queen Mary’s University of London. The reason I applied to the Telefonica Finance Graduate program is because Telefonica has always been in The Times’ top 20 biggest companies to work for. Being an international company I knew there would be areas for me to develop my future career aspirations. I chose the finance program specifically because of my professional development through gaining the CIMA qualification, as well as being able to move around every six months within the three year scheme to understand different areas of finance.

I thought the business was very big and overpowering, but when I walked in I realised that everyone was really friendly and open and was able to approach them and ask them any questions. Throughout my time here I have found people quite open and they always have time to talk to you, whether it’s about my career aspirations, or whether it’s my day to day life or my family.

There's no such thing as a typical day. I normally come in and speak to Marketing to understand what propositions or promotions we're looking to do. I then model these promotions and propositions, see if they're workable or if they need a bit of tweaking. I will then make suggestions to change them a bit in order to make them more accessible for the customer and understandable. I then go and report to Sales on how their performance has been doing and look at what our competitors and other areas are doing, in order to try and tweak our promotions and make them better for the customer.

The achievement I’m most excited about is something I started about a year and a half ago. I worked out and found a new way of measuring the company’s carbon dioxide omissions through business travel, whether it’s through roads, through cars, through rail or through air. I worked out a way in measuring each individual employee’s effect on the environment and their CO2. Once I compiled this. I was able to help change the way the company was reporting its carbon dioxide omissions through business related travel. I had to present this all the way up to the top team Sustainability Forum and take that across the business. I then rolled this out and that has changed the way the company reports on sustainability. It was quite rewarding the way it snowballed onto the top team’s lap so to speak and so therefore it was very rewarding to have, finally rolled it out and is running throughout the company.

If you're applying to the scheme you don't have to have a finance background. Myself I had an engineering background and I thought it would be difficult to apply, but they're open to everyone and everything so it's a nice variety.

Applications for the 2012 Industrial Placement Year are now open. If you would like to apply please send your CV and answers to the following questions document to financeplacement@o2.com. The closing date for applications is midday on Friday 27th April 2012. For full details about the campaign timeline please visit The Process.