Vacation student Review

As compared to small accounting firm, I get to work on bigger clients, namely the high street banks. I believe that I would not gain such an insight if I were to work on an internship with a smaller accounting firm. However, due to the nature of the job (audit) which is off-peak during summer, it does not give me a typical audit experience.

My colleagues/ performance manager valued my perspective and often took in my suggestions, even though I was just an intern. They trusted me and they were willing to give certain authority to me when I was carrying out my work. When I had done the job, they will provide me with constructive feedback whenever necessary.

They were very supportive and willing to guide when I was on the job. While I was not very satisfied with some monotonous job, they were willing to take the hassle to make certain arrangement so that I get more challenging job. For instance, while I was not being booked to any client during the last week of my internship, my performance manager made arrangement to post me to greater London (as I was based in Birmingham).

It met my expectation. I reached office at 9am and left office at around 6pm. The job was quite intense but I felt that the workload is just right for me to learn but at the same time not feeling too stress. I had deadlines to meet at the end of the job but everyone was helpful where we helped each other when one was allocated with too much jobs.

I felt that I could had been given with more responsibility. While audit is statutory and the workload should be allocated according to grade of employees due to the experience needed, but I understood myself well that with my ability to learn, I could carry out the job with equivalent performance.

As I am studying accounting and finance in University of Warwick, audit which ensure financial reporting fits into the regulations is the best fit of my degree study. It gives me an insight on what is happening with the commercial world as compared to the knowledge that the lecturers had taught us.

I based at client's office more than KPMG office. In client's office, we were just given a room to work on. While client might not be the nicest person, colleagues are nice in the sense where they would joke once in awhile which lighten up the atmosphere. On the other hand, KPMG office has a nice atmosphere where it was designed to be open-space. Thus, employees of all grades sit together and there were a lot of opportunity to know each other.

The internship is only organised up to a certain extend. There was an induction training on the first day but no formal job related training was organised. Besides, we only met all the interns once on the first day. Interactions between interns were minimal. There was no formal social networking event being organised so that we could know what the graduates do in other departments.

The induction training was just very general and not much could be gained. However, personal development comes much more from the performance evaluation once every 3 weeks. This gave me the opportunity to know where had I done well and identify areas of improvements. As this happened during the middle of the internship, it gave me the chance to change my attitude to perform better for the rest of the internship.

The future employment prospect in KPMG is great. With high conversion rate from intern to a graduate trainee, I believe most of the intern will get a job from KPMG. We were given support on firm's value and how to pass partner interview. Colleagues were willing to share their insights as well on how they went through the process of getting employed.

The cost of living in Birmingham was not too bad as compared to London. The interns' pay is definitely sufficient for us to survive to live in the city. Besides, company's lunch allowance has helped us in terms of cost of living. It does not cost much to socialise. Going out for a lunch or dinner once in a while is affordable.

In general, clubs and societies within KPMG were not as active as what it would be in the university. The CSR activity was a failure for midland region interns due to a breakdown in communication between KPMG and the non-government organisation. Thus, we were mainly focusing on work and not much involvement in activities outside work.