Calum Forshaw

My first introduction to Baillie Gifford was during my third year at university. We were due to tour the data centre and meet some people who work there, but because of Covid, we did it virtually over Zoom.

So, I was impressed that the tour still went ahead and how open they were during it. You could see from the get-go what kind of things you might be working on and whether they would interest you. And because they were, I applied.

That willingness to be open and answer your questions was a feature of the recruitment process. There was plenty of time for a chat, so there wasn’t ever the pressure you might feel in a more formal assessment centre process; it all felt quite relaxed and designed to let you be yourself.

It’s a progressive company that looks after its staff. Perhaps because of that, there is a very open culture where it is easy to talk to anyone because you know they will make time for you.

I love the community aspect of the graduate programme and the camaraderie with others who are in the same boat as you.

Your cohort all starts simultaneously and undertakes an intense training period together. Although you go on to do different placements, you are still part of this network that now spans the department.

You also are part of the GMAC (Graduate and Modern Apprentice Community), which allows you to connect with those who are at different stages in their journey and where we can support one another.

I am currently placed in the Internal Platforms Team, which is part of the technology and service delivery side of Information Systems. We look after things like servers and storage in the data centres, as well as virtual machines hosted in our public cloud environments. This means that every day is different as there is a wide variety of projects to be involved in.

There’s a great emphasis on ensuring that we have the right tools and systems in place so that the company can provide the best service for clients, and that’s the main priority of people here.

Please note that any references to current teams in bios are as of the time of writing and may not reflect the current situation due to the rotational nature of the programmes.