Industrial Placement Review

I learnt a lot during the year and had good exposure to clients and the industry, but decided I didn't want to pursue a career in that industry after the placement year. However, exposure to clients led to me gaining a better idea of which career I wanted to pursue long term.

At the start of the year, there was little work to do and members of the team were not really sure what work to give to me. However, through building up responsibility by performing well on simple tasks at the end of the year I was treated the same as a second or on occasion third year graduate.

I was given good guidance, however there were times when the work load was very unstructured and at times I would be searching for work to do and others were absolutely swamped and then at other times I had far too much work and others had no work. However, I think this is synonymous of the big 4 regardless of level.

As above, my workload varied from day to day. However, on an average day I would get into work at 8:30 and leave at 6:00, with the longest days being 8-11 (for a relatively short period of time). However, I worked harder than perhaps I needed to and this wasn't expected and other interns would get in at 9 and leave at 5:30 every day.

I was given an incredibly amount of responsibility on my placement year and would talk to clients independently every single day and attended a number of client meetings. I found this responsibility came through a combination of performing well on tasks to build up responsibility and also simply by asking for responsibility.

The skills were of little relevance to my degree, other than general exposure to the working world makes you appreciate university a lot more and work a lot harder whilst at university. However, I think the general client facing skills, exposure to the working world and the technical skills i learnt through the two months at college or on the job will be useful for any future finance job.

The atmosphere in the office varied a lot depending on the team and it would be hard to say that my experience would be representative of another person applying to the placement year as the people you work with depends largely on the individual student. However, the general atmosphere was very friendly and everybody even up to the partner level was very approachable.

The placement was very well organised at the initial stage i.e. the introductory week, the time at college and the placement student socials. However, on the first day in the office I was surprised by how unstructured the work was, there was no work assigned to me and as a placement student or grad you often have to look for work yourself by reaching out to people and asking if they have any work you can help on.

The firm invested in my opinion too much time and money in formal training for a placement year. Every intern spent two months of the year at college sitting two modules of the chartered accountancy qualification which will be of little use as they do not speed up the time to qualify and returning as a graduate you will still have to spend the same amount of time in college.

Future employment prospects are very appealing. I received a job offer and as did every other intern that I am aware of. The general consensus is that if you finish the year you will get a graduate offer and this can be deferred for one year fairly easily so you can take a gap year before starting your job.

There was a good social scene among the interns and lots of people went out most weeks on a Thursday or Friday. There were also several events organised by HR during the year for all the interns. The christmas party is a major event and its clear EY spend a phenomenal amount of money on the event and this was one of the highlights of the year.

Cost of living in London is very well publicised, but generally speaking you should still be able to finish the year with some money saved providing you don't go on multiple holidays, which is very tempting. There are also lots of areas in London for students and recent graduates which are fairly reasonably priced so the cost of living is probably not as high as you would expect if you have never lived in london.

The new offices are in canary wharf so several bars/restaurants etc... there and more generally there is a lot going on in London! However, the majority of interns were in audit so this means that most of the year they were away from the office at the clients site which could be anywhere in the UK so during the week many interns were away from the office.

There were opportunities to do different sports outside of work however this was not very well publicised. There were also various societies, however it felt these were more targeted at full time employees than interns. However, I didn't take as much of an interest in this as I could have so there may have been more opportunities if I had looked harder.