What kind of work do our innovation graduate scheme recruits do?

Our 2020 Graduate Programmes are currently open for applications, recent Commercial grad Catherine praises the exciting opportunites of the scheme.

Catherine Finnes is on the Commercial scheme in the Customers Business Unit and has just completed her second placement, at our innovation accelerator Blue Lab.

She decided to apply for the EDF Energy graduate scheme because of the wholesale change within the industry and the range of placements she would have a chance to complete.

The Commercial scheme she is undertaking offers a broad experience to help recruits build both specialist and people skills.

Catherine said: “Each placement is completely different so in my first placement I was working as an analyst and that was a lot of number-crunching, spreadsheets, maths and stuff, whereas Blue Lab was a lot more about stakeholder management, communicating with people and planning and writing documents and writing reports. 

“So already, just from my two placements, I’ve done two completely different things in completely different cultures.”

“I’ve really enjoyed Blue Lab, it’s very different to any other part of the business. The culture is so fast paced and agile and every day is completely different.

“It’s hard to explain what you actually do because you just do so much different stuff and you learn so many different skills all of the time, which is an amazing opportunity, and everyone is so friendly. It just makes it even better to come to work.”

One of Catherine’s highlights in Blue Lab was successfully delivering a Car Sharepoint trial at Barnwood. At the end of the pilot she personally presented the results to her sponsor, Chief Financial Officer, Rob Guyler.

Catherine said: “I’ve learned how to trust my own judgement quite a lot and plan a lot of things by myself, but the responsibility and independence I’ve had managing this project has been way more than I expected.

“Not many grad schemes out there give you such a broad range of experience. I’d encourage anyone to apply.”