Audit Intern Review

I was welcomed to my team with open arms the day I stepped into office. My in charge was very accommodating towards me and would always take time to walk me through things I did not understand. He was also extremely friendly and would take me out for drinks with the rest of the colleagues after a long day of work.

My colleagues would trust me with their work and would delegate work that normal associates do. I was never asked to photocopy or scan anything, which was quite a surprise for me considering my last internship consisted of me mostly printing documents for everyone. I was treated fairly and was given equal responsibilities as everyone else. I definitely felt valued towards the end of my placement.

KPMG provided every intern with a performance manager where he or she would be in charge with meeting you a few times throughout your internship to ensure that you are doing well and developing throughout the period. I met with my performance manager twice, once and the start and once at the end of my internship to talk through things. She was extremely helpful especially with setting the right expectations and she provided me many great tips on how to ace my partner interview at the end.

KPMG was very accommodating with the time I spent at work. I usually get to go back around 5:30 to 6pm when I completed my work. Even so, if I still had work to do past 6, my colleagues insisted that I go back and continue work the next day. Everyone made an effort to ensure that I am occupied throughout my day and even when I have no work to do, it becomes a matter of your own initiative to ask around and occupy your time while you are there; after all, you are there to learn, not to just sit around.

The responsibility that was given to me was equal to the responsibilities of first year associates. This speaks a lot because you can see that everyone really trusts you with the work they have and expects the same of you when compared to your peers. As I have said before, it was also a matter of stepping up and putting yourself out there to ask for tasks and making sure that when you get them, you perform up to standards so your seniors can delegate more high level work to you.

I come from an Accounting and Finance background, so many of the things I did was very related to the internship I was placed into. However, the things I have learnt exceeded the things I have studied, and many skills can definitely be applied towards my final year at university. For example, I am now an excel wizard and I am definitely more organised than I was before. I can now comfortably network with people who are well older than I am and I am less afraid to speak out on things that I truly believe in!

I was placed on a team that worked on clients site permanently, so I did not get to truly experience the atmosphere at KPMG's HQ. However, my team had a great team culture and are generally pretty close with each other. I am always greeted in the morning the moment I walk in and the regular office banter keeps the mood light even during most stressful of times. We had team lunches everyday with the associates and we would have the occasional cheeky Friday jump-starts where we get off work at 3:30pm in the summer!

Personally, I believe that the structure of the internship could have been improved. I was placed on one team for the whole 6 weeks of my time, which I truly enjoyed. However, some of my other intern friends at KPMG was placed on 2 or 3 teams over the 6 weeks. Personally, I would have loved to be rotated at least once to another team to get a wider range of experience and also to meet more people. But then again, I do not regret working with my team for 6 weeks because they were absolutely amazing! Perhaps having a more uniform structure where everyone gets a rotation would have been interesting for us! Or else not do it at all and keep everyone at the same team throughout the internship.

KPMG provided each intern with a performance manager which I believe was truly helpful with our development. My performance manager was in constant contact with me throughout my internship. Any questions I had, I could just ask her and she would answer me right away. My biggest development however was the fact that I was pushed outside my comfort zone having to network and socialise with people I have never met.

I believe KPMG has a great graduate program that really supports you, especially if you want to get an ACA qualification. One program that they have, the intensive program, particularly appealed to me because it allows you to study for one year (while still getting paid), and then work for the next two years; in contrast to working and studying for the duration of three years at the same time, where this is common in the other big 4's. I guess this is what sets KPMG apart from the rest, as this allows us to fully focus on our exams and then fully focus on work, instead of stressing out about both!

I believed that this was something lacking over my internship. Because I was working in Audit, most interns are placed at client's site. Therefore, we do not have much chance to mingle with other interns. Furthermore, each team only had one intern, so it was difficult to see each other during working hours. However, KPMG did organise an awesome bowling social for fellow interns and I definitely had a blast during that event. Most of my socials with interns were efforts put in by interns to meet up after work for dinner or drinks, which was lovely because we barely get to see each other during working hours.

London is an extremely expensive city. However, KPMG pays the living wage, which is meant to be enough for you to live in London comfortably. However, if you eat out regularly and go on night outs every other night, it is definitely not enough.

The night outs that I had during the 6 weeks were with my friends from university, not with colleagues at KPMG. So I believe this was not as good as I expected. However, my team was planning an away day which I heard would end at a club, but unfortunately the event was the week after my internship ended.

KPMG had a CSR day where they invited all interns to attend. This was a good effort put up by KPMG, but the event itself was about pitching to a non profit a business idea. I was expecting to do something more hands on, such as helping kids at a shelter or cleaning up the streets of London, but we ended up just pitching our ideas and it does not seem like any ideas were taken into action after that session. No news about the winning idea or any implementation of the idea was heard and it all seemed like a day wasted because my friends and I could not see any relevant impact that was made towards the society as non of our business pitch was taken into action.