Associate Indirect Tax Review

I enjoyed the variety and consistency of work I received during my internship. There is far more to VAT that I had previously imagined.

I felt like part of the team and was valued as such.

For most tasks, I first met with a member of the team who would give me an overview of the task and what is involved and after the task I would meet with them to discuss what I came up with. During any tasks all members of the team were happy to help in any way they can, not just the person setting the task.

I had a good amount of work at any given time, if I thought that I may be running short of things to do there were plenty of people who would be able to give me additional tasks and people would always check my capacity before giving me work to make sure that I very rarely had to work late.

I was given responsibility with regards to setting out my structure for each day to take into account work loads and deadlines. Although, naturally, all work produced was checked before being sent out to clients.

My internship was pretty much my first time working in an open office, I felt that this gave me a good chance to improve my team working skills. Further having the chance to get involved with client meetings and calls gave me an opportunity to develop my communication skills. Also having never worked with VAT before, I had to practice my research skills in order to develop answers for client queries.

I felt that, in general, my office had a friendly, team based atmosphere. There was a clear sense of team spirit both in terms of regular office social gatherings and with collaborating on various projects. Also while in the office, the team would always be willing to have a chat while working and was generally a fun place to be.

The internship was very well structured, it contained weekly tasks in order to develop technical and presentation skills for the interns and to keep some level of control over work load. On top of this it was arranged that the interns would have meetings with each member of the office to discuss their experiences and roles in the team. Further to these tasks it was arranged for members of the team to shadow senior members and get involved in their client projects.

The first gave the interns a good chance to get involved with many areas of VAT law and we received some VAT technical training in order to be able to create responses to client requests with legal accuracy first time. However the internship was only for 6 weeks, which would not be anywhere near enough time to become fully technically trained.

Very appealing, Deloitte have a great promotions system that takes into account training, experience and also the desired work-life balances of each of the members of the team. I consider that it is a great place to work. Further I received a job offer from them in the team that I interned with.

The team had regular social gatherings, both in the work day (eg. team lunches) and after work. After work the team often takes part in social gatherings together including regular pub visits, office parties and other activities for example go karting and pizza making.

The cost of living seemed to be reasonable, however I commuted to work which reduced the costs for me.

I commuted to work so I had very little chance to get fully involved in the nightlife due to train times.

There were plenty of chances to get involved in out of work social activities with members of the team. These included, pub visits (including regular attendance of a pub quiz), pizza making, go karting and office parties.