Deal Advisory, Summer Intern Review

During my internship, I enjoyed the variety of work given to me and this was one of the highlights. The research was current and so it was exciting to be hands-on. Also the inclusion into the team, for example, team meetings and work drinks was great as well as making friends with a lot of other interns.

I felt quite valued by my colleagues which was shown by the inclusion onto research projects. After meeting people, often they would come to me to see if I wanted to help them out. I found this from the new graduates to the seniors. The feedback that I got was always good and often I got asked to do more work for them.

Every intern gets a performance manager and people leader to oversee progress and to work on targets that could be met during the internship. I met up with both of mine in the first week and communicated on at least a weekly basis. The first meeting was great as I had the chance to ask lots of questions and talk about realistic things to achieve.

in the first week, there was more general learning and admin tasks so I did have a task to do most of the time, but not in the way that I felt pressured. Then into the next couple of weeks, I had days where I had multiple tasks to do but it felt good to get busier and my time was well spent. The last week was a little less busy since it was difficult to be onboarded, knowing that I would soon be leaving. Any other gaps where I didn't have work was filled with online training to improve my skills

I was given some responsibility even early on but to some degree the chances are limited since I am not qualified yet which is the ideal for most projects. I was given a task with sensitive information at one point so this showed that they were willing to give me some responsibility.

I learnt a lot about the workplace environment however this isn't so relevant at university. There were some useful things that I learnt, for example, I took a lunchtime excel class on short cuts and learnt a lot more functions in excel that I haven't used before so this will definitely enable me to be more sophisticated if I do any excel data analysis. The improvement of my networking skills and finding the ability to step forward for opportunities will always be useful.

The atmosphere was generally calm when people were working. There was the element of comfortability and we were free to go up and ask people questions or have a quick chat. The environment was also hard working so I felt motivated. During things like team meetings, there was a great balance between serious talks and a fun atmosphere with joking and banter. There was also a few organised work drinks so I felt comfortable to go with my colleagues and have a drink which was always fun.

The internship organisation at times was good and other times the lack of communication between HR and my department was evident. For example, most of my colleagues didn't know there were going to be interns in the department so there wasn't any proper work ready for us so we did spend the first couple of days doing the admin stuff. That being said, some elements were really organised, for example, the first day was an induction day where we learnt how to use the company laptops and we had compulsory training sessions on how to fill in timesheets and other admin tasks. The CSR day was well organised and I enjoyed that immensely and there was a buddy system implemented which did and didn't work. My buddy went on holiday a day after I met him, however, other grads in the office always offered support.

Like I said before, the first day was an induction where we learnt a few things and we all got our own laptops to use for the whole internship. Further to that we had SAP training, health and safety training, and always had access to an online bank of courses in which we were free to study them. This was a good amount for the short time I was there.

Yes, we made friends from the very first day and had our own group chat. Most days we would eat lunch together and then often go out for work drinks afterwards. KPMG organised a networking drinks just for the interns to get to know each other as well so we met people from the other divisions.

The Corporate Social Responsibility day was a great one to get involved in and in my department they have a social committee who organise work drinks at local pubs and bars and then other times of the year, they organise things like the christmas party. They also organised softball and football against other departments.