Summer Intern Review

A mixed bag as far as enjoyment of the work I was actually doing, but EY is a great and friendly company, the people were nice and there was lots of opportunity, so on the whole pretty strong. It sounds like it can be somewhat luck of the draw in terms of who you actually get assigned to though (talking to other interns), and some teams are definitely better than others. So even though I enjoyed it not everyone did.

I was on a number of different teams over 6 weeks, and on the whole everyone valued interns fully. They gave you proper work to do (not just photocopying etc), so you felt like you were contributing. The feedback culture is also very strong, so you always know where you are in terms of what you are doing for the team. Some people do not take interns as seriously as others though - for one team I was on the more senior people did not care at all whether I had work or not, but the more junior team members made up for it,.

The support and guidance structure at EY is very intricate and kind of fragmented, in that you have lots of people looking after you but they do not necessarily talk to each other (eg. buddy, counsellor, team manager, direct work senior etc). On the whole every individual was very good at supporting and guiding me and answering any questions I had, but you have to work out early on who the right people are to answer a specific question and if you don't then you could get left a bit unguided.

Balance was very good for me as I had work most days 9-5, but very few days after 5 so I could go and do stuff outside of work in the evenings. There were 3 or 4 days out of 30 where I had very little to do, and at those points it was quite frustrating. But on the whole the balance was really good.

Not a huge amount. Everyone is incredibly careful about risk and independence, and as such interns do not really get to go into the meatier side of the work in terms of client engagement (eg. I was asked to prepare a briefing file for a meeting my team was having with a client, but I was not allowed to sit in on or contribute in the actual meeting itself). They also do not allow interns on the online share drive (called Canvas) in case we mess up all the workbooks, which makes work sharing etc a massive hassle.

Will help with career, but not with uni

Good at the EY head office: relaxed and generally quite happy and well equipped. You might spend a lot of time on client site though, and these vary massively in terms of team atmosphere. For example I sat in a room with my team for 8 hours a day for 10 days, so if you have a good team it's great, but this might not always be the case and you could get unlucky. Most teams are good though, from what other interns have been saying.

It was overall alright. The Summer Internship Placement team were good at being in contact before the internship with details etc, but the starter form process was a massive hassle and literally took me almost a full day (not ideal when you are at uni and have plenty of other stuff to be doing). Application process was really smooth for me. On arrival things started falling apart a bit (eg at the end of the first day I did not know what the plan was for arrival etc on the second day).

On a tacit level. Everyone is very happy to explain things to you and people on the whole understand the importance of educating interns as they are the future of the company etc etc. But in terms of formal training it was very limited. There were no opportunities for seminars etc. Almost all the learning was on the job, with the rest being through a couple of very limited web based learning activities. Very much down to you to search for training and help.

I feel most interns will get a grad offer, and the process for getting an offer is actually really easy. You just have to make friends with your counsellor (who fights your case when they decide on offers), and collect feedback for all your work at the end of an engagement. Having said all this I have not actually received an offer yet...

It was quite good. Hugely dependent on department again though, There are only 2 events organized for all the interns (first day, more learning than fun, and last day) which is quite poor. It is very much down to you to make friends with other interns by being proactive. Most people are quite nice and easy to get along with though to be fair. I did not have any department socials either, but have been invited to a boat party after I finish.

Lived at home during the internship, so standard London costs.

London. Good. Expensive though.

Quite a lot. There are lots of sports clubs in EY which you can join (although you have to search for them and who is in charge of them, and most happen in central London quite late so if you don't live centrally there's no point). Also good diversity and inclusivity networks, eg LGBTQ have a payday social most months I think.