Intern Review

The Early Diversity Internship Programme was enjoyable insofar as it was more or less in line with my expectations based on what I'd heard and learnt about it beforehand. I left with a greater understanding of what work as Civil Service Fast Streamer generally entails, a clearer understanding of what exactly constitutes a successful application to join the Civil Service Fast Stream, and made some new contacts with people with similar career ambitions to me. That said, the fact that such little time was actually spent in government departments observing the work of Fast Streamers meant I could only glean so much and did not improve my understanding of their work as much as I would have liked to.

During the plenary sessions led by the recruitment team at the Civil Service Fast Stream, I really got the feeling that they were extremely keen, even desperate, to recruit us to join the Fast Stream - either as a summer intern next year on the Summer Diversity Internship Programme, or as an actual employee upon graduation. They were keen to show how work at the Fast Stream had advantages over alternative professions open to us. The Fast Streamer I was shadowing was also very accommodating to my needs, and always happy to answer my questions and queries, but the work I was doing was done essentially independently with almost total autonomy.

As stated in my answer to the previous question on how "valued" I felt during my time while enrolled on the Early Diversity Internship Programme, the work I did while shadowing a Fast Streamer in the department was essentially autonomous, and so I did not receive much guidance and support aside from instructions prior to the beginning of my task. That said, I didn't really need much guidance or support to undertake the tasks because they were by nature fairly self-explanatory with pretty clear aims and expectations. During the plenary sessions outside of the department, guidance and support about how best to go about applications for Fast Stream roles in future was abundant.

Given the very short amount of time I spent shadowing a Fast Streamer, I was unable to undertake massively sophisticated work which would allow me to develop any skills significantly. I developed some skills mainly during the dedicated skills session run by the Civil Service Fast Stream recruitment team, but even during this I found myself questioning the value of some of what I was being taught - things like "networking skills" seemed pretty obvious. Thus, in terms of skills development, the Early Diversity Internship Programme was not particularly useful. What was far more useful about the Early Diversity Internship Programme was the information I gained about the nature of work at the Civil Service Fast Stream, gained by virtue of talking to Fast Streamers and actually undertaking some of their work myself; but, again, given the fact I was not afforded much time to spend in shadowing a Fast Streamer, the information I received was not as much as I would have liked. Nonetheless, I go forward with a greater, albeit not massively greater, understanding of the nature of the work done in the Fast Stream and what skills are required for it (even if the programme did not allow me to develop those skills much).

On the whole, the Early Diversity Internship Programme was well planned. We were given timetables beforehand which told us where we had to be throughout the week and at what times, and we were told beforehand in good time about which Fast Streamer we would be shadowing. The information provided in advance of the programme was also satisfactory. However, where the Early Diversity Internship Programme falls back in terms of structure is in the length of time it allocated to particular activity; far too little time was allocated to shadowing Fast Streamers (the most valuable aspect of the programme), and certain activities like the tour of Parliament were not particularly valuable by comparison.

The answer to this question will vary among participants of the programme, because what we all look for in the "atmosphere" varies. For me, I did not find the atmosphere dull because the work I was doing and the things I was learning were indeed new and at times fascinating. However, a significant proportion of the programme was spent doing things which I did not find particularly enjoyable, almost always because I did not consider them a valuable way to spend my time - the tour of Parliament being a prime example of this.

It was clear from the outset and indeed throughout the entirety of the programme that the Civil Service Fast Stream recruitment team wanted us to join the Fast Stream in some capacity in the future, whether as an intern or as a permanent employee. To this end, they did put a commendable effort to ensure that the organisation seemed an appealing one to work at and they informed us of information and skills that would put us at an advantage during the application process.

The only way I ended up improving my understanding of what work as a Civil Service Fast Streamer was like was by actually shadowing a Fast Streamer and talking to them. Consequently, because I did not spend nearly as much time shadowing a Fast Streamer as I would have liked or expected, I did not gain much new information of what it would be like to work as a Fast Streamer. One obvious aspect of this is simply the fact I did not spend much time with them; it was impossible for me to view their work properly. A corollary effect of this was that the Fast Streamer I was shadowing, because I had such limited time available, could only give me fairly low-level tasks which were not useful in providing me with an overview of work as a Fast Streamer.

The working culture which exists in the Civil Service, in both the Fast Stream and the Civil Service at large, and indeed which exists in most public sector professions, is one which I knew a lot about already prior to participating in the Early Diversity Internship Programme. Thus, nothing significantly new was learnt by my participation in this regard. Nonetheless, my participation was helpful insofar as it validated my previous understanding of the working culture at the Civil Service, and it allowed me to ground expressions of this culture in concrete and specific examples of work undertaken by Fast Streamers.

Although I did not gain as much of an insight into the work of a Civil Service Fast Streamer as I would have liked, I did gain an improved understanding nonetheless. Prior to enrolling on the Early Diversity Internship Programme, I had little intention of joining the Fast Stream; my main motivation for enrolling on the programme emerged out of my interest in politics and the workings of government institutions - I wanted to learn more about the ways in which the gap between a political party's manifesto promise and policy implementation are bridged. Now that I have completed the programme, I can say that what little I did learn about the nature of work at the Civil Service was largely in line with my expectations, and so my willingness to become a Fast Streamer has not changed.

Reimbursement of expenses was not without controversy. It was the understanding of most of the participants on the Early Diversity Internship Programme that our travel expenses for the week would be covered, save the first £10 which would be paid for ourselves. After the programme, when we came round to filing the expense claims (itself a complicated process we were given little guidance on), that we would have to pay the first £10 from each individual day's travel expenses, rather than form the whole week's travel expenses; in other words, we had to pay the first £50 rather than the first £10 as we had expected.

There were sufficiently many integrated into the timetable for the week, and it was made clear to us from the very beginning of the programme that further networking opportunities were available if we wanted there to be. When requested, the organisers of the programme were always able to meet our requests and provide us with opportunities to meet a strong variety of Fast Streamers and other Civil Servants.

No official social event took place during the Early Diversity Internship Programme. However, the networking opportunities were helpful insofar as we were able to talk to plenty of Fast Streamers and hear about the nature of work in the Fast Stream. They were mostly willing to communicate and were candid when posed open questions.

Bluntly, no. I did not ask about such activities because I am not interested, and similarly there was no noticeable effort for us to be told about such activities. I strongly believe in a firm divide between professional and personal life (in all professions), where activities outside of work are clearly delineated from those within work. I thus have a strong reason not to find out about activities outside of work, and am extremely grateful the Early Diversity Internship Programme respected this (whether inadvertently or not).

I would only recommend the Early Diversity Internship Programme to somebody else if they are seriously considering joining the Civil Service Fast Stream. It does provide a great opportunity to talk to Fast Streamers who are usually very happy to answer and questions or queries, and to a lesser extent it exposes participants to the work that Fast Streamers do. For those merely with an interest in politics or in public sector work, they would be unlikely to find the programme massively rewarding.