Lara Hobson
Finance Graduate Trainee
Richmond, United Kingdom
Studying alongside working has been challenging, but RELX has provided support and resources to make the process easier. The RELX Finance Graduate scheme has been an amazing first step in my career. It has allowed me to explore both different areas of finance and different areas of RELX. Throughout my time at RELX, I have been lucky enough to meet many friendly people across the company.
I graduated from the University of Kent with a first-class honours degree in Economics. While pursuing my degree, I completed a placement year at GSK within the Insights and Analytics team. This experience, combined with knowledge I developed throughout my degree, helped cement my interest in finance as a career.
I joined the RELX Finance Graduate scheme in 2021, a three-year program allowing UK-based graduates to work with three different RELX teams, as a member of the Record to Report (R2R) team for the Legal business based in London. My primary responsibilities involved ensuring the accurate reporting of financial information, financial analysis and general ledger maintenance. Additionally, I worked on different ad hoc projects throughout the year such as SOX controls and statutory accounts preparation. The role provided the great opportunity to collaborate with team members in the USA and the Philippines. My year in the R2R team developed my financial knowledge and was a great foundation for both my career in finance and at RELX.
I joined the Internal Audit and Assurance (IAA) team in September 2022. During this rotation, I worked on audits across the four RELX business areas and RELX central functions – gaining valuable experience in audits across a range of areas. Given the diverse type of audits the IAA team conducts, I gained a deeper understanding of RELX. The responsibilities of this role provided a unique opportunity to interact and network with senior management as I was given the responsibility to lead an audit abroad and meet all key stakeholders face to face. Part of being an auditor is being adaptable and having great communication and critical thinking skills. Interacting with a variety of people throughout the organisation and being exposed to a wide array of business areas and types of audits while being a part of IAA has greatly enhanced these skills.
In September 2023, I began my final rotation as a Portfolio Analyst in the Global Commercial team at Reed Exhibitions (RX). This role consists of producing insights and analytics for key stakeholders. In addition, I will be creating key metrics and tracking for the different exhibitions in the portfolio, working with a range of stakeholders to produce strategic plans for key events. Furthermore, I will also be working with M&A in building financial forecasts in relation to acquisitions and performing valuation analysis.
Additionally, as a part of my graduate scheme, I have been studying the ACA professional qualification. I have passed 14 exams so far with one more to go.