Assurance Intern Review

The internship itself was really interesting and enjoyable. The variety of work one might experience is largely dependent on whatever team, client, department etc. you are assigned to. In a year-end audit you are likely to have more interesting and challenging work, though hours here will be longer and may have a negative impact on your enjoyment.

One of the main positives of Ernst & Young is the friendliness of the employees. You will find that almost everyone is happy to meet with you, over a coffee for example, to have a chat. For instance, while considering a potential transfer to another department (which I later decided against) I was able to reach out to employees from Associate to Director level to seek out advice and information. Specifically on the client engagements, as long as you ask questions when you are not sure you should always have enough support and guidance available to you.

This entirely depends on your client, and is therefore based entirely on luck. Some were on busy clients, and some were unassigned for periods. As a general point, in audit one should expect a 9-5 job for the summer months for the most part (occasionally pushing to 6 pm). However, if you are assigned to a year-end audit engagement, the hours can be very long, stretching to 10pm. Whether the audit team will expect you to stay as long as them is dependent on your own wishes and themselves of course.

As alluded to above, the more you ask the more you will be given. Expect, of course, as an intern the level of responsibility you will be given is limited - however one could still expect to manage mini projects and being given tasks where it will only be checked by a senior once the task is finished by you and otherwise the work is completed independently. There will be interns, who may try to avoid taking much responsibility - ultimately this would be possible as it is entirely dependent on the individual to want to want the responsibility.

Fairly limited though my soft skills certainly improved especially my confidence, speaking skills, ability to work under pressure etc. A big skill I would encourage people to develop on an internship is to learn, or improve skills in, how to network better. The ability to make and keep connections, is key and certainly an important skill that I expect to be very helpful in the future.

In general you will be out at a client site so this depends on your team. Of my 3 clients all were fun and enjoyable. There will be some EY office socials, and of course one could organise some socials with your other interns, but expect to spend the most time with your client team.

Personally it was very well organised as I always had work and experiences available, so PERSONALLY I would give a 9/10 A big pro was the fact that EY organises a partner shadowing for you, which I found to be incredibly illuminating and helpful. There were some interns i know of , however, that became unassigned and therefore were given uninteresting filler work, while on the opposing end of the spectrum some were on very busy clients.

One should expect to get a job conversion unless they do something particularly bad. Or if they do not pull their weight and work hard. I would say that as long as you are enthusiatic, willing to work hard, not afraid to ask questions when you are unsure and sufficiently bright you should expect a job offer too.

Again this is subjective and dependent on luck on who youre interns are, which department you're assigned to, how busy you are, how much free time you have etc. Some had better social experiences than others. Though for those looking to go out each day there is always something going on somewhere if you wish to find it.

London prices are of course high and it is therefore expected to pay a lot for food, drink, travel and any other cost. Though the money from the internship which is somewhere around £2500 is enough, atleast for me, to cover all my outgoings. I can forsee that for someone who does not live in the London area, may have some financing problems.