Summer Intern- Audit GPS Review

The placement was very enjoyable on the whole. The people I worked with were great and the work was interesting, however at times I found it a bit repetitive with a lot of waiting for responses. The experience is definitely what you make of the opportunities you are given, you are invited to take part in many different aspects and you have to pursue what you find enjoyable.

From the very beginning I felt like I was doing the work that any first year graduate would have been doing and thus I had an important role within the team. Although I had to keep asking a lot of questions everyone was extremely helpful and had so much time to talk to me. I was also included in a lot of the social side of the company, giving me a chance to get a real feel of what it would be like to work there and talk to my colleagues in a much more relaxed setting.

My supervisors were great at giving support and assistance. From the beginning of them setting me a task they would be there to check in to see if I needed any more help until I learnt that I could go to them at any point for some help or to check the work I had done. The management were very friendly and took the time to get to know me and see what they could do to help make my experience the best it could be.

This was very dependent on the client I was working on at the time. For the majority of the clients I was very busy and always had a couple of things I could be getting on, whilst still being able to finish everything I started in the time I had on the client. However on one client there was almost nothing I could do, so I spent most of my week searching for things to do to prevent boredom and make the most of the experience.

I was given the work of a first year graduate, so I was left to do tasks from start to finish on my own but always had many people around me who could check my work and I could ask for advice and help when I was not sure what I was doing.

Most of the skills I learnt are transferable into many different careers particularly the use of Excel, business writing and communication skills. Many of these were skills that I thought I already had but after using them in a business setting the improved immeasurably, from learning how to word emails so they are clear, concise and get what you need to how to talk to people at different levels so you can share skills between each other.

For the most part the atmosphere was very friendly, most people wanted to get to know me and were happy to answer any questions whether related to work or just about their own personal experiences. Different client sites had different atmosphere and were very dependent on the size of the team and the space available- one week it was me and one other person in a small room another it was a group of 10 in a large office. This obviously affected the atmosphere

The team organising the internship were very good, they gave us as much information as we needed and checked up with us to see that we were happy and there was nothing more that we needed. In some cases, some of my supervisors had not been told how the internship program worked but they always helped as best they could. The training program at the beginning was a great way to start.

EY did a 3 day training for all the regional offices at the start of the internship, as well as IT training and security training. This was a good introduction but due to the many different areas in which people were working there was very little targeted training so a lot had to be learnt on the job. Supervisors took a lot of time to show me how to use programs but it felt like I was taking up a lot of their time.

After the program ended my performance over the 6 weeks was evaluated with me and then after this was reviewed as part of the national program I was offered a job with the same office doing the exact job I had been doing.

The office had a good social scene with lots going on but I worked from a few different client sites, each of which were different. On the smaller more remote sites there was very little socialising and no where to go to lunch even but in the bigger city center jobs there were options to go for drinks. As people were coming from a large area to work, it was difficult to stay for more than one drink.

The south east is an expensive area to live and work in especially with the graduates on a higher salary so their choice of bar and restaurant being slightly more expensive,

The nightlife in Reading and Oxford were very good with a good mix of places to go, however when at more out of town client sites there was very little to do.

There were plenty of opportunities to get involved but most of these were based at the office, whilst most of my time was spent at client sites approximately a 1 hour drive away making it very difficult to take part in these activities.