Financial Services Assurance Intern Review

The internship was thoroughly enjoyable, EY put on a range of range of social events at the start of and throughout the placement to ensure that all of the interns felt at home. The level of engagement from all of the employees at EY was unparalleled. They are very personable and friendly, lots of fun to work alongside!

Everyone within the company was genuinely interested in hearing what I had to say, despite having no prior experience. They welcomed a fresh set of eyes and questions on any level to test the normal operations. From early stages in the internship they included me in client meetings and conference calls, making me feel very much a part of the company.

I was assigned a different supervisor for every audit engagement. The supervisor was always quick to set some work to throw me in the deep end but be more than willing to help whenever problems arose. If there was ever different work that I wanted to explore or attempting to find someone to shadow, the supervisors took time to make sure I had the best experience I could.

The nature of the placements occurring over the summer, when client work isn't at its busiest, meant there wasn't always much work to do. That and the lack of qualifications as an intern only permitted bits and bobs of fairly basic work to be done. Having actively sought out work from those not directly prescribing work though, there were always things found to do. I found myself doing a decent amount of self research on a day to day basis into the work that was being conducted around me just to try and grasp more of an understanding.

Despite arriving into the job with no prior experience of professional services or audit work, from the offset there was work set, deadlines and clients to meet. The internship I believe matches the graduate role for responsibility but I always felt like a valued member of the team. Rather quickly, the work I had completed was checked over less frequently by my supervisor.

The amount you learn over the space of 6 weeks is incredible. From high level company information to tiny details on engagement specific audits. It is all very valuable information, for non business related degrees it wouldn't help much in studies, however if career in accountancy, financial services or anything business related it is invaluable. You should however learn some handy time saving Excel tips for all aspects of work!

In audit, little time was spent in the EY office as mostly teams would be at the client site. Regardless of the location, the atmosphere was one of a friendly, open and inclusive nature. Anyone on the team would be happy to answer any questions, go for coffees, or drinks after work. Although everyone takes their work rather seriously there is ample fun to be had within the teams.

The internship was organised extremely well. A student recruitment team was helped out by employees from all over the business who were on secondment to the programme. From social events to corporate social responsibility days, information was always sent out well in advance and the events organised ran seamlessly. There were designated people to go to for help and all the interns were provided 'buddies' to get to know the organisation and ask questions they might not want to ask the supervisors.

EY is in a rather large growth period at the moment, with resource demands from growing client bases increasing massively. The internship is competitive to get on to, however they offer graduate places to a large number of interns from the programme. Because of the scale of the company, there is rather great fluidity to do whatever you want in any department within the organisation as long as you are prepared to go out and grab it yourself. All of the service lines set you up to do very desirable qualifications for any future career.

All of the interns were very eager to get involved in social events. Despite EY putting on a handful even within the first week, most nights throughout the internship huge numbers of interns would meet for drinks, dinner and further explorations into the vast number of things london has to offer. Everyone had common interests and was very personable, fitting the EY culture very well.

London is not the cheapest place to live or socialise to say the least. Combined with the sociable atmosphere amongst the interns and travel/ food costs, it is impossible to save any money from the internships pay. If looking to rent in london with friends (not easy otherwise) for either an internship or a graduate role expect to pay ~£10K/year for some pretty primitive accommodation anywhere sociable and commute-able. Pretty quickly socialising should become something other than finding the nearest bar as well!

Despite the cost, there is so much to do in london and a wide variety at that! From Clubs to bars, pop up restaurants to exhibitions there is more than you can shake a fist at in London. Unfortunately working in the Canary Wharf office for part of the internship meant travelling after work whenever looking to do something sociable, but lots of the clients offices and indeed the main EY office are located near lots of attractive destinations.

Given the size of EY there are a huge number of sports clubs and societies to get involved in with people from the organisation.