Finance Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement year at Virgin Media. The placement scheme is structured with good support & advice and the roles available to interns are enjoyable and allow you to add value to the company. The year flew by and as the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun!

Everyone in the company is really friendly and you're not treated differently by colleagues just because you're an intern. My team were very welcoming when I started and they definitely helped make the year long placement enjoyable. They were willing to help out if I had any problems and I felt I was an important member of the team.

My year group had a Head of Year who acted as a mentor to us and held monthly group and 1 to 1 meetings with us. He was great at supporting us with any work or non-work related issues and gave us advice on future careers. My manager was easy to approach if I had an queries or concerns with work related topics which definitely helped throughout the year.

Virgin Media is a forward thinking business and therefore works at a fast pace to stay ahead of the competition. As a result there's always work to complete and there was never a time when I didn't have anything to do. If I felt like there was too much work I was able to voice my concerns to my manager and we would take appropriate measures to level out the workload.

I was given lots of responsibility in my role over the year as a result of being treated as a normal employee as opposed to just an intern. I was able to attend meetings with important stakeholders and contributed to important projects which had an impact on the business because of the responsibility bestowed in me which I can use to boost my CV.

We had quarterly training sessions with all the other interns which included presentation skills, managing change, future careers and personal development. All of the content in these sessions will be relevant in my future career and have helped to boost my confidence. Having sufficient presentation skills is essential in the workplace and this workshop gave my great advice which I'll continue using when doing presentations in future.

The atmosphere in the office was very friendly and the morale was good in my team throughout the year. The office wasn't too loud but if I found there was too much noise there were plenty of meeting rooms available to work in. The Executive Committee were regularly seen in the office which helps to portray a less formal atmosphere.

There was a good structure to the placement with a 2 day induction at the start to introduce all the interns to the company and a handover with the previous intern which helped ease us into our roles. Quarterly training sessions have helped developed us professionally and there was a summer event for all grads and intern with awards and team building activities.

The quarterly training sessions provided by Virgin Media show they care about the development of interns and were very worthwhile. There was also lots of resources provided online, such as online textbooks, tutorials for applications and development sessions, which anyone could access and we were encouraged to make use of them.

If you perform well over the course of your placement you're almost guaranteed a place at the assessment centre for the graduate scheme. The graduate scheme is well structured, similarly to the intern scheme, but allows graduates to rotate through different roles over the course of the scheme. There is a good success rate of graduates completing the scheme and moving into higher roles which shows there is a clear career progression available in the company.

Not all interns are based in the same office so I tended to socialize with other interns on the same scheme as myself on a regular basis.. When we had the training sessions with all the interns, we organized activities to get to know each other such as mini golf and going out for meals.

The cost of living was relatively high as the office I worked in was down south and so rent is more expensive than other areas of the country.

The nightlife was under par around the office but Reading or Guildford which are a bit further out are the closest areas to the office to have a good night out.

There isn't much in the surrounding area of the office but we organized 5aside football after work and occasionally went to the pub after work with my team but you need to be proactive in order to get involved with activities out of work.