Hey, my name is Colm Murphy. I’m a Commerce student in the Cork University Business School in UCC. I’ve just completed my 6 months work placement as a Finance Intern in Dornan Engineering's Finance Department, and I’m about to begin the final year of my degree.
Dornan Engineering are an Irish Engineering company completing different electrical and mechanical engineering jobs for large pharmaceutical and industrial projects in Europe, with their head offices being located in Cork.
When I was in the process of seeking out a placement role at the beginning of my 3rd year in college, Dornan assured that throughout my six months placement that I would have the opportunity to try a number of different areas of finance. This was a hugely attractive prospect to me because, similarly to so many people in my year at the time, I didn’t have a clue what career route I wanted to go down after college.
While in Dornan I worked with the Financial Accounting & Reporting team, the Tax team, and even did a small bit of insurance work. Initially, I was the only intern in the office, which meant that I was put straight to work, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I got huge amounts of industry experience, doing meaningful, important tasks. Not only did it make me feel really valued and trusted as an employee, but it did wonders for my confidence too, and I found myself really enjoying the responsibilities and gaining more independence by the day.
I must include that any team I worked with and everyone in the office in general welcomed me with huge kindness and made me feel so comfortable in what was my first experience of a full-time office job. This gave me a platform to grow, not only as a working professional but on a personal too and I feel like I have grown and matured considerably because of this.
My main tasks were to complete the monthly Internal Audit and Balance Sheet Reconciliation process, then review and conduct reports based on their results for the Financial Accounting and Reporting team, to assist the tax team to ensure that any of our subcontractors were tax compliant and help with the company's upcoming insurance renewal. I had innumerable smaller tasks in between these too, all of which contributed in their own way to the hugely positive experience that I had.
It was extremely interesting to see the differences and similarities between what we are taught in college and how it is applied in industry. For example, the coming together of the theory I had learned in my accounting lectures and the application of this knowledge in the workplace was actually really fulfilling, in a way it made the past three years of grafting in college really feel like it was worth it because it was the first time I really had the chance to apply what I had been learning.
While some people might have had the ambition to secure graduate roles for themselves in their respective placement workplaces, my hope for placement was a bit simpler. The main thing that I wanted to get out of placement was to have a greater sense of clarity about my future, and what I wanted to do professionally. My six months with Dornan definitely gave me this, and I now go into my final year of college with a concrete plan in place to build for my future!
Find out more about studying Commerce at Cork University Business School at UCC here.