“A valuable insight into a fintech role and what it entails…”

Following Taskize’s mid-year staff and strategy review, we wrote about a new internship and work experience programme, and here our latest placement student Charlie reflects on his time at our London HQ…

I really enjoyed this experience and my time with Taskize, and their office atmosphere really contributed towards that.

For some background on me, I recently finished my GCSEs and I’ll soon be starting Sixth Form where I’ll be studying further maths, computer science and physics for A Levels, as well as Mandarin at AS Levels. I chose these subjects not only because they will be useful for work in the future, but also because I enjoy being able to find an exact answer to things. 

I’m not sure what my ideal job would be, but I think that these past two weeks have given me valuable insight into an office job and what it entails. The part I most enjoyed about going to an office was getting into a routine. Plus, the people in the office were really helpful and created a comfortable environment, which is what made this opportunity even better, as I didn’t feel nervous my particular role. 

During my work experience, I looked into accounting practice – I went through T-charts and how there are always at least two sides to every expense. I also went through the government Companies House website to investigate other company records to see how finances work within them. This was particularly useful as it helped me to understand finance better and see what actually goes into and out of a business. 

I also spent some time working on Payroll reporting. Using Python I went through a payroll document and processed it to work out the individual monthly contributions which go towards pensions. This involved exporting data from an Excel document using Python, then formatting it and writing it into a CSV file. This practice was really helpful as it required some research into a module called ‘pandas’ to read from Excel. This was great practice and will help me in the future to process data more efficiently. 

Like another Taskize work experience student, I spent some time using a website called ‘Advent of Code’ which is like a Christmas advent calendar but for coding. It challenged me by asking me to alter the code of the initial task, which really improved my ability to plan and be flexible when it comes to coding.  

Something that surprised me about the experience was the office culture. I expected very long working hours, something like 8am till 7pm, but it was 9am to 5pm for me, with most people working from home. Whether the office was busy or quiet, it still had a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.