Summer Intern Review

I thought that working at EY in Newcastle was a brilliant experience, really friendly teams to work with. I really felt like I had the opportunity to work on a variety of different pieces of work within audit as well as on a variety of different clients including a council and manufacturing firm and a FMCG firm.

The teams at Newcastle were very warm and welcoming on our first day. Since that day, we got involved in work straight away as if we were permanent employees. They gave us responsibilities that would have been expected of graduates or higher and I felt that really made for a positive and inclusive experience.

I thought that general guidance on jobs was great, colleagues as well as supervisors were always willing to support me in jobs that were new or that I was struggling with. Further to this, I really like the buddy and counsellor system, although I did not see much of my buddy after the first couple weeks. My counsellor was always there for discussions regarding how I’m finding the job as well as my future career, I really liked the way I could go to them about anything.

My first few weeks I was on a busy client so I had plenty to do throughout the day, however as he audit came to a close the amount of work that I could take on reduced as I would not have been able to do it. However, despite this I was able to work on the long term presentation project in my downtime which I found really useful to keep me organised as well as occupied.

I was given a lot of responsibility to engage with the client many times, request samples and a lot of general correspondence. As my confidence grew during the experience, my colleagues also started to give me more challenging tasks and I felt I was really given the opportunity to stretch myself beyond what I would have been able to do at the beginning of the 6 weeks.

I am currently studying finance so the experience for me went both ways. I was able to work on more tasks given my prior knowledge in the field as well as learn new things that are definitely applicable to my further studies. Overall, I feel that the team were so welcoming to your degree background that everyone would have developed useful financial skills as well as soft skills which will always be useful in the future.

The general atmosphere in the office was great. People were so helpful and there was a real positive outlook in the work we were doing. It never felt like I was being crushed under pressure, nor that any staff felt too under pressure that it would affect them. All my colleagues were so helpful in general that I feel that the working environment really is ideal.

The overall internship was well structured. I thought that the idea of having a universal induction for all interns across the country was a great idea as we got a chance to see and work with people from all locations. The idea of having a CSR day as part of this allowed us to bond and build friendships whilst nurturing some real teamworking spirit.

EY offered online web learning programmes for us to take part in, however there were no specific guidelines on which to take or how to take them. These same programmes were available to the rest of the staff and we could take them on if we'd like to. I felt that the company could have listed a few that we should complete alongside our work so that we could gather an understanding of what balancing real-time work and skills development would be like.

I felt that future employment prospects with EY were appealing as the work culture and the environment, regardless of what service line you were in, was very welcoming and there was a sense of a collective goal working project by project. I would definitely like to work at EY in the future as a result.

In Newcastle, there were only 3 of us as interns and we used to hang around with each other and socialise daily. I suppose if there had been more interns there would have been a better social scene in general. However, some other colleagues also encouraged us to join them and socialise from time to time which was very welcoming of them.

The cost of living and socialising in Newcastle is very reasonable. It is possible to get a decent place to stay for around 100 pounds a week, maybe even less and in terms of socialising, there are many places you can go where deals are on all the time. There are places to socially play pool, table tennis, mini golf, lots of bars and many many restaurants. All of which are cheap.

Newcastle is generally known for its nightlife and I found personally that it lived up to its reputation. Everywhere you go the prices are extremely reasonable and people are very friendly and there's always a good, energetic atmosphere. Even getting a taxi home late at night won't cost you more than a fiver even if you're going from City Centre to Gosforth.

Yes, there were a lot of social activities that we could take part in with other colleagues. Other than this, there were lots of clubs and gyms dotted around the city for which you could get a membership and take part in different activities on a day to day basis.