Financial Control Analyst Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship, mainly due to the fact I was made to feel like a valuable employee throughout. I was given jobs with high responsibility and given the same starting process that a anew employee would receive. It was a very friendly atmosphere in the office which made it enjoyable to go into work.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. I was made to feel like I was a permanent employee that had been at the company for a long time, and became good friends with the people on my team. when possible, they ensured I had things to do and always made sure it was as interesting as possible.

I was given support when I needed it, but one of the main things I learnt was that sometimes you are required to do some independent learning and it is down to you to complete a task sufficiently. However, if I needed to ask someone else for help they would always be happy to assist.

I found that, although I had a lot of work, there was also times where I had some time to work without a set task. In this situation, there is lots of alternatives to do, with endless online training modules to increase skills, and also other tasks such as charity challenges to keep you occupied.

I was given lots of tasks that required responsibility, and also found that I was responsible for my own progress and learning. I was often given tasks that were of high importance, and also often given tasks with nothing other than a required outcome - how I got there was down to me.

I think the skills i developed will help me going into my degree. I learned a lot of how accounting is applied in the real world that you don't usually see when learning accounting. I also learned a lot of technical skills such as Excel, something I knew I needed to work on previously.

It was a great atmosphere in the office and everyone was very friendly. There is a real sense of community between everyone there which really helps. We had some events such as a boat party in our first week and my team were always trying to make work as fun as possible.

The internship was well organised which could've been tricky considering accommodation was provided for us at Royal Holloway. There was a slight issue on the first day when travel was provided for us but following this there was no further issues. We had a development day that had travel provided and this ran smoothly. Other than these, everything was very smooth.

We had access to all of the online learning modules provided by the company on Workday which was very helpful. We also had skills sessions provided for both Excel and presentations which were very useful and I felt I learnt a lot from both of them, and they became useful in my role.

The fact that we had accommodation provided meant that there was always a chance to do something social with fellow colleagues. There was regular games of football or trips to get a drink or similar. Some interns cooked and ate together and it was very social amongst everyone, and always a chance to do something.

The cost of living was relatively cheap, obviously helped by the fact we had accommodation provided at Royal Holloway. There were many shops within a 15 minute walk, to suit any price range. A short walk into Egham gives the opportunity to go to Iceland, Tesco or Waitrose. The pub across from the accommodation was very cheap, however venturing into Windsor could be expensive.

The area around Royal Holloway didn't have huge amounts of nightlife, other than a few pubs nearby. If you wanted something more extreme, Windsor was closest but this was quite expensive. Some people chose to go into London a couple of times but this was a 40 minute train away, which didn't run coming back

There were a few opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. There was a boat party in our first week for all of finance. There was also an opportunity to play football with colleagues after work on a Wednesday, and some people used the work gym with colleagues at times.