Summer iternship Review

I really enjoyed my internship with EY - the work was varied and interesting, the people I met were friendly and inclusive and I'm sure that it has set me up very well for the workplace as I have a much better idea of the type of thing I could expect from a graduate job.

Generally everyone I worked with was so helpful and welcoming - I think sometimes they struggled to have enough work that they were able to give me when they hadn't expected to work with an intern, so sometimes the work was less important, but overall I think that I felt valued and made an important and useful contribution to most areas I worked on.

Everyone was very approachable and usually easy to contact - for example I was able to easily set up a meeting with one of the managers I worked with to have a coffee and catch up and talk about my career goals. Sometimes supervisors seemed unsure on who the best point of contact was for issues that arose.

I think this totally depended on the client that you were on so there was a real range, I think there could be more preparation so that people knew in advance they would be working with an intern so they had work to give them, I found I was more likely to be not busy enough than too busy.

I was given more responsibility than I expected - within the first week I was talking to clients on my own and performing work that was important for the audit overall which I really appreciated as made the time feel more valuable. We also had a lot of responsibility for organising our own time and transport to clients which could be slightly daunting.

I think I learnt important skills such as developing communication skills with clients, general presentation skills and also how to present yourself in an appropriate way. I developed confidence in talking to senior people which is useful for your development and to reach your goals in university and your career.

I didn't spend too much time in the office - only about 1/6 weeks but the general atmosphere was always good, there was always people to have a chat with but everyone also worked very hard. On the client sites the teams I worked with were very friendly, as were the clients.

Some parts were very organised - our induction was good and generally communication to people you worked with was efficient and useful. I found it hard to always know who to contact for issues, and feel that in some aspects the recruitment team could help us more with this as it was overwhelming to start.

We had the opportunity to take part in corporate social responsibility events which was really fun and contributed to personal development, for example doing charity work and raising money. The firm also put time and money into ensuring our experience was exciting and enjoyable, hosting socials, making sure we had all the right equipment, and giving us time to train and understand the work we were doing.

I would love to get a graduate offer from EY and would definitely take it up after I finish university. It's so nice to have a proper insight into the work I would be doing so I'm sure that I would enjoy it as otherwise I would have no related experience.

I got on really well with the other interns socially and we kept up to date with each other throughout the internship and went out for dinner etc. It was clear that the people on the office had good working but also general relationships which was really nice to see.

I lived in my student accomodation so was already paying rent, and generally it is much cheaper than my home town. However I did have to travel to the office/client site each day which added up, but did have money for socialising - being in the north east I think is generally a lot cheaper than the south where I'm from!

The nightlife I think is very good but we didn't take advantage of it that much, being on different clients and in different places each week meant it was harder to organise to go out together. Generally the city I worked in was lively and had lots going on especially at the time of the internship which was exciting.

There was a lot going on in the city I worked in for example art and cinema which was really nice to see. I really enjoyed the city and having some time to get to know it more.