Research Brand and Communications Intern Review

I really enjoyed the internship, and think that it was really well organised. One of the highlights was definitely the social side with the other interns, as we had over 40 interns there were plenty of people to meet and talk to, especially with weekly post-work drinks and other trips as well.

I was always told how much the team valued my help, always getting recognition for the work I'd done and they always appreciated that I was volunteering my time to be there. I heard basically only good things about other teams and managers as well from the other interns that I spoke to.

We had multiple points of contact for support and guidance, from our personal managers (who we had 1:1s with every week) to a casual "mentor", ex-interns and the staff in charge of running the internship scheme - everyone was happy to help with whatever you needed.

For the majority of my internship I had a decent amount of work to do without getting bored or too busy, however occasionally I'd be finishing off projects before I got my new ones and there'd be a lull, but this was mostly unavoidable and my manager was always checking I had enough work to do, and always checking whether I had time for new work before giving it to me.

Whilst my projects weren't so important that it'd be awful if I did them badly, I still worked independently on them unless I had to ask someone something, and the work that I produced was actually used, so while it may have not seemed like the most important work in the world, it was still stuff useful to the team and felt about right for the internship.

I improved upon many skills I already had, including time management, multi tasking, powerpoint, excel, graphic design etc, but I also gained new skills including using Adobe InDesign, content management systems, and a new graphics software. In addition to this, the internship put on free CV/LinkedIn and presentation skills workshops, which will definitely be useful in the future.

The atmosphere was very relaxed, feeling like everyone who was there wanted to be there and enjoyed working for CRUK. People were always happy to help and were very respectful of the fact that the interns had volunteered their time to help out, and the teams were always very friendly with the interns, often doing drinks or lunches with them.

I'd say it was very well organised, with many tiers of support that the interns could go to for help and advice, and the induction day and welcome package was very good at getting everyone off to a good start. The staff that ran the internship were also always available and kept in contact.

CRUK put on several free courses for the interns, including ones on writing CVs and interview techniques, LinkedIn, and presentation skills, and the managers were always happy to try and get the interns experience in areas that they found the most interesting - CRUK also always mentioned how they'd want interns to come back for the grad programme and other jobs.

They're definitely quite appealing, and I already know some interns that have gotten jobs here as they had graduated from uni already, and the team running the internship always sent around jobs that might be of interest to the team. As well as this, we get to join intern alumni facebook and linkedin groups for more jobs to be advertised to us.

There were around 45 interns, which meant there was a great group of people that would meet up for lunch and to chat, especially with drinks after work every week and other activities we organised, such as a trip to Wimbledon and the Shard, and the other interns were definitely a huge bonus in my time here, and I'd recommend getting involved with them as much as possible.

As it's London, the cost of living is going to be high, and the majority of the people here were living at home and commuting in, however in terms of socialising there are several bars and restaurants we found that were very well priced, and there are also actually quite a lot of places that give discounts to those that work at CRUK, including the interns!

Again, it's London, so there's always going to be something going on at night! As most of us commuted, we never went on proper nights out or anything, but with weekly drinks we went to several different bars and pubs, all easily within walking distance.

So many! There were intern fundraising opportunities where we put on events to raise money for CRUK, there were volunteering opportunities being advertised all the time, such as volunteering at Greenwich Comedy Festival (basically getting to watch it for free whilst doing some fundraising in the intervals) and there are also running clubs, a yoga club etc that you can get involved with.