Corporate Tax Intern Review

I've really enjoyed my placement. I've been working in the tax department and have seen a great variety of work and gained a lot of skills that I didn't have prior. The people are really friendly and welcoming which made it a much more enjoyable experience. Grant Thornton really is a nice place to work.

From when you first receive an offer, you'll be assigned a buddy. This person is your go to if you have any questions or daily queries. So, from as soon as you start you'll know that you have a friendly face in the office and a support system. The rest of my team were always happy to chat to me, and I've been assigned work by just about everyone in my team so I've been able to get to know and work alongside lots of different people. You won't just be interacting with the same 2 people every single day. None of my team were hugely and deeply serious and always happy to crack a joke.

On your first day, you'll meet a variety of people at different levels in the office. We had one of the partners spend some time with us to tell us about his career and answer any questions, which was very welcome. Otherwise, you're assigned a people manager who is your support network if you're really struggling with anything, need some advice or you're unsure of what you're doing. Mine always made sure to check in that I had enough work to do, how I was enjoying things and kept up to date with what I was doing. In your first week you'll set goals, then several weeks later you'll have an interim meeting to check in on this and then near to the end you'll have a performance review to go through everything you've learnt and developed.

I was never completely swamped with work, as they like to make sure you're having a good time and that you leave work on time and you're not staying late. On the other hand, they want to make sure you have enough work so that you're not bored! I would say myself and the other interns were always kept busy but not to the point that we were stressed. You can take on as much work as you like, but you're always made to feel like you can say no. In the tax departments we have weekly meetings to share the work around, which I felt was really good.

I was given plenty of responsibility, once I was ready. After my first and second week when I had learned the ropes, the members of my team would assign me work, explain it to me and then let me go for it. They were always happy to answer any questions I had and would review it afterwards, but otherwise it was left to me to give it a go and figure it out for myself. I learnt how to do the take on processes and after I'd done one or two I was able to do it completely myself and be responsible for doing all the processes independently, which was good.

At University you do a whole lot of theory, which did come in handy during my internship, but it can be quite dry and boring. Actually doing the work, I found, was way more interesting and helped me understand how to put the theory we've been learning into practice. I now know a lot more about going into the workplace and my potential career path, and I feel I'm a lot better equipped having done an internship for a grad job that perhaps people who hadn't.

We have a really vibrant, fun office. The people are quite young and while they maintain professionalism doing their jobs they're all genuine, down to earth and kind people. There was always plenty of social events, networking on offer and other opportunities to do something outside of work to further your career or just get to know your colleagues. It was a really good, positive atmosphere. We have plenty of shared workspaces which I like, including sofas to have your meetings on!

There was a pretty good structure to my internship. There was a couple of things I would change but because my manager asked for feedback on this (they're always looking to improve and make it better) hopefully these will be sorted out for the next bunch. By no means was it chaos, generally very well organised and you know exactly what you're doing and where.

In our first week, GT sent all the interns to the London office to do some training and get to know each other. Then, later on in the placement they sent us to their own training facility, which is a beautiful manor house leased from the national trust just outside London. At the end of your internship, you'll have to do a final presentation. So, for two days, we did workshops to develop our presentation skills. We have two facilitators who are from different parts of the business and they really take the time to get to know you and really really helped improve my skills. I felt way more confident having done those workshops when I did my presentation. Those were tips and coaching I can use much further into my career.

I haven't had my final meeting yet, but the general opinion within the firm and from talking to previous interns who are now in grad roles I think that as long as you are genuinely interested in joining the firm and do a good job during your 6 weeks you'll be offered a job. They've already invested quite a lot of time and money in you, so it makes sense that they'd like to keep you on in your role and see you through into a grad job. You need to consider that an internship is like one big job interview, they're going to see if you can perform well doing the work and if you fit into the company.

Yeah, we had 8 interns in our office (which is quite small compared to other locations) and they were a lovely bunch. You're free to take lunch for an hour whenever you like so we always tried to make sure we took it together. When you go down to London in your first week and then later down to our training facility you'll get to meet a lot of the other interns at different offices and have a couple of drinks with them and socialise, which is really nice. They encourage you to get to know other people and build your internal network.

Glasgow isn't too bad. I was living at home so obviously saved a lot of money that way but generally it's quite an affordable city. There are really good transport links in terms of trains and busses that are quite cheap too, so you don't have to live in the city centre to work there. If you live a bit outside the city centre it'll be cheaper. Plenty of cheap and decent places to eat and pints aren't an absolute rip off as long as you're not stupid about where you choose to go. A decent night out in Glasgow doesn't always have to be a rip off either.

Glasgow has really decent nightlife. It's by far the best place to go out in Scotland. Plenty of really decent restaurants, pubs, clubs and they're all right next to the office. The office is right in the centre of town so you're in the heart of the place to go out. Ideal.

I was invited to several networking events, including one just for startups. You just need to chat to your colleagues, see what they're up to and generally they'll invite you along to something. We had lots of fundraising events which were nice to support also, it's good to see the firm taking an interest in charitable work.