Policy Development Intern Review

CRUK offers a great internship programme. Although, personally, I haven't done an internship before coming to CRUK, I have spoken to my colleagues and everyone has been very impressed with how structured it is. There is a general intern supervisor who makes sure that we are getting exactly what we want from our experience. He also brings all the interns together and encourages us to interact with each other and learn about the work done in different teams. Separately, every intern has a line manager, who in my case has been of great help and gave me a lot of valuable tips as well as she ensured I got a good feel of the department by getting involved in a variety of tasks. The internship also offers a mentoring programme and CV and LinkedIn workshops, which are of great help to people who are looking for jobs (which is most of the interns).

Everyone in the department was extremely nice to me. At the start of the internship I have been told how valuable my work will be. I worked with a number of people across different departments at CRUK and I have always felt like my work will have an impact on what they do. Knowing how meaningful your work is a great way to motivate you to do your job even better.

I have been given full responsibility on three independent projects, however these were all internal. Although my work can help the team and can potentially influence their further actions it did not have any direct effect on the external work done by Cancer Research UK. I have however seen the kind of work that is being done by the permanent staff and how influential it is.

I am currently in my first year of PhD and this placement was get experience of careers outside of academia. Having done my internship in Policy Development I now have a good understanding of the work being done in the policy sector. The main skills that I developed during my internship are team work (working with people in my department as well as cross-departmental), persuasion and communication. Writing policy briefs requires you to be very factual but at the same time engaging to keep the reader interested. It is also important to write in a lay language to ensure that complicated information can be understood by general audience. I believe that these skills are essential to make a good PhD student and will be very beneficial in my next steps and when writing my thesis.

Policy Development department is much more serious when compared to the rest of the CRUK's departments. It is still fun but people are much more concentrated at their work as it is not as creative as work done by the advertising or fundraising teams. The atmosphere in my department suits the nature of the work done here and so overall I believe it should stay the way it is.

Extremely organised - probably the strongest feature of this internship. From the welcome/introduction day through monthly catch ups to feedback forms and additional workshops - everything has been of a solid structure and I cannot suggest many improvements. Jonathan (the intern supervisor) has done a great job by putting all of it together and making sure that everybody is satisfied with their role.

Considering that our internship was only three months long there were a lot of opportunities for personal development. The company offered a team work training during which we got many useful instructions of how to come up with new ideas with a group of people, many of which I will definitely use in the future. We have been offered a CV workshop as well as personal advice. There was a mentoring scheme for the interns who were interested. I recently attended a workshop on effective public speaking. There was also a lecture on how to use LinkedIn to attract employers.

London is extremely expensive in terms of both living and socialising. However, there are many places with special discounts for CRUK employees, including interns. There were a lot of good deals for drinks after work in the local pubs, discounted coffee and cakes in Hummingbird bakery as well as some restaurant discounts. Angel is a very lively area with many theatres, restaurants and pubs, which made it very easy to go out with other interns after work.

The office is surrounded by numerous trendy bars and restaurants. We had a head intern who organised weekly outings in the area and that was very popular. We usually had a group of 15 + interns and were sometimes even joined by the Intern Supervisor! We also celebrated a few birthdays. Overall, Angel is a very lively and fun area.

We worked only 4 days a week so had a day off to get involved in any extracurricular activities that may have been of our interest. I joined the grassroots group at another charity, RESULTS UK. CRUK also ensured we can get involved in many of their fundraising events, such as bucket collection on the World Cancer Day, Britain's Biggest Breakfast or the Great Row, and many many more. Interns also organised several internal fundraising events and I got involved in the Valentines origami and Costumes for Cancer, for which we collected £100 and £200 respectively.