Finance Intern Review

I really enjoyed working with Network Rail because the company is so big so you can find out a lot during your internship. There are regular trips out of the office for away days and site visits, so it helps to give you an idea of the scale of the work the company does as well as the different offices they have around the country.

The environment is very welcoming and all the staff are really friendly and supportive. Everyone in Network Rail makes you feel like you belong in the company and that is the culture they like to promote. The people in the company will help you with any problems you may face and make you feel valued.

Managers/supervisors will check up on you occasionally and there is usually a weekly catch up session to go through things. You can always ask for help or ask them any questions about the work you are doing or anything really, they are always willing to help. They don't expect you to be perfect.

The work varied from time to time and for the most part there wasn't a consistent volume of work to complete. The key is to manage your time effectively and balance your tasks with other projects to make a productive workday. The other interns and I created a project to work on to fill time when we did not have that much work to do.

I was given quite a few important tasks to do, one of which included allocating the right amount of funds for projects. This was a key area in which I was responsible for as many members of my team did not know how to perform this action so I helped them use the system to allocate funds.

The particular team I was working in did not directly have any links to my degree or equip me with any new skills as the work was mainly admin based. Although, I did massively develop on my soft skills and presentation skills. Through small team huddles or bigger meetings, you will get the chance to improve your soft skills.

During the internship the company did invest in the interns in the respect that we were given the opportunity to go on training programmes and learn the same things which current employees are learning. The scope of training and development increases drastically once you join the graduate scheme as you are more permanent.

Future employment prospects are very appealing, especially for the finance graduate scheme where the scheme lasts 2.5 years and you finish all your CIMA exams within that time. After coming off the scheme you can expect to go into a band 4 role in any of the teams in the company once a position becomes vacant.

The other interns are very sociable and like to go out every so often after work or on weekends. With fellow colleagues, the majority of them would go straight home and spend time with their family but for the younger people in the office (graduates mainly), they would regularly go on nights out.

There were a lot of people in my office who played football and I knew of a girl who played netball. There is a multipurpose sports pitch right next to my office so a lot of people regularly go after work to play football once a week and they are welcoming to new people if you did want to play.