Summer Vacation Scheme Student Review

My experience with Deloitte was a very positive one. The work I did was interesting and varied and I felt they really put the effort in to make the internship worthwhile. Whilst the internship only lasted six weeks, I felt like a useful member of the Deloitte team and everyone was supportive and helpful towards me.

The vast majority of my colleagues at Deloitte were very supportive and I felt I could ask them for help whenever I needed it. The work they gave me involved real clients and I felt like they really valued my input instead of just giving me pointless work to keep me busy. There were only a few people in the office that I felt I didn't really make friends with.

My supervisors at Deloitte were very friendly and supportive. They were happy to answer questions about the work I was doing and never made me feel like my questions were stupid. I received extensive training to help me feel confident in my role. The only slight issue was sometimes I felt my supervisors were too busy for me to interrupt them with questions.

Overall I was given a moderate amount of work and achieved quite a good balance during my internship. Most days I would have quite a bit going on with work for several different managers lined up, so it was important for me to manage my time well. Only occasionally did I feel I had run out of stuff to do.

From the very first week, after having completed my basic training, I was given real clients to work on. I was allowed to attend some client meetings and felt like my input was very helpful. I was involved in compiling information for real clients and inputting it into the Deloitte system, and was given the same level of work that a Deloitte graduate would get.

As I am doing an Accounting and Finance degree I feel the skills I developed at Deloitte will really help me in my final year. They helped me to gain more of an appreciation for the wider business environment and gave me a renewed interest in accounting. The self confidence that my internship gave me is also very valuable and it helped me develop my time management skills.

The office environment in Deloitte was generally very positive. I was in a regional office so it was quite small which I liked because everyone knew each other. The office had a policy of hot desking so most people didn't have a fixed desk. Instead you were encouraged to sit with different people every day which was good as it gave me a broader idea of the different types of work going on in the office.

Overall the work placement was very well organised. Before I started at Deloitte I was invited to meet my Deloitte buddy who was a current employee who'd joined Deloitte as a graduate a few years ago. He supported me in my day to day work and made sure I always had something to do. Sometimes he took a little while to organise bigger things such as client meetings but overall he made sure things ran smoothly.

I felt like Deloitte invested a lot of time and money in me. To start with they paid for me to have several meals out in order to welcome me to the team, also including a farewell meal at the end of my internship. They also invited all students doing regional internships to an overnight welcome event in a nice hotel, to help us settle in and feel like a part of the business. They also arranged for me to spend one on one time with senior members of staff, giving up their valuable time to help me settle into the business.

The future employment prospects with Deloitte are great. At the end of my internship I did a final partner interview, the same kind as those going for a graduate job will do, in order to assess my suitability for a job with Deloitte once I graduate. I was successful at this stage and now have a job with Deloitte lined up for after I graduate. I got the impression that Deloitte make job offers to the vast majority of those who undertake a placement with them.

As it was a very small office there weren't many other students on a placement there, but my colleagues at Deloitte always made sure to invite me to lunch with them so I didn't feel left out. There weren't really any social events going on at the time of my placement although there were some lined up for later in the summer which I feel I would have been invited to if my internship was still going on then. I was, however, invited to one staff member's leaving do despite not knowing them well which was nice.

I undertook a placement in the same city I go to university in so I already had a place to live which made things cheaper. The cost of living here is about average.

As a university city, the nightlife is pretty good. However, I was usually too tired to go out much at the weekends!

There were all the normal opportunities to do activities outside of work that you'd expect in a big city. Deloitte didn't offer anything specific.