Intern Review

I liked the placement. It is a very varied role working in recruitment dealing with all types candidates and clients. Hays provided a great 3 month training programme which helps you understand the market and get up to speed (coming from a student background)

Most of the time I did not feel like an intern, but instead a full-time employee. Even as an intern you are given tasks and the responsibility of a recruitment consultant - making an impact in the team.

Regularly given support with training at the start of the year. After that, management is happy to help if you can't work out your problems on your own.

There is a mix of really busy days - and the long hours are understandable. However, there are other days that were the opposite and I was doing typical intern tasks like printing and photocopying (admin tasks).

In terms of recruitment - most interns are on a 360 (full cycle) desk dealing with candidates and clients. I was lucky enough to be given the chance to run my own event with over 80 attendees - so I was given a lot of responsibility.

Not much as my degree is very mathematical

Sales environment. A lot of weekly incentives like free coffees. The office in general is very loud as everyone is on the phones. Very "work hard play hard" culture and environment.

Started off really organised with the training and setting up, however, a few interns were then given different responsibilities and potentially changed teams. But after that, it was pretty good. The ability to add/take away responsibilities to your day was a plus!

Very strong 3 month training programme at the start, however, after that it was very hard to get any additional training from the experts. The only way to go about this was by asking your team members in their free time to help.

Having worked here for a year, I have been able to see the different types of roles available to staff away from the recruitment side of things, which is helpful if you don't see yourself having a career within sales.

This was a let down. There are very few (1-2) events in the year where the interns collectively come together in a social aspect. This should be improved a lot as it's really good to get to know the people in the same boat as you as well as making new friends in this very corporate and big office of 350 people - it can be quite hard as a first job. Other placements offer team lunches, days out, etc. and there was a lack of that here. If there was a event organised, there was a lot of pressure to hit extremely high targets to get the ok to go.

As we were in central London, it was extremely expensive to live and socialise on the wage the interns are on. Again, most other placements offer a lot more money for working in a flagship London office, so this was a big struggle. Also, interns do not get commission in this commission based role. This is very unfair as we have the same responsibilities as a full time employee but do not receive the same benefits despite being on a much lower wage. The "intern bonus" is not sufficient enough to cover the costs.

Very good. Being in central London there is a lot on offer if you can afford the high prices.

There were a few events like the London marathon that Hays would have helped fund raise, but apart from that not much at all.