PwC Summer Intern 2019 - Assurance Review

I have enjoyed working for PwC as a company, both the office and the teams on client site were welcoming to the interns. I personally do not think that audit is for me, but the internship was a positive experience from which I was able to take away some beneficial advice and feedback.

One of the strong points of PwC is the people who work there. They were all very friendly and were understanding that, as an intern with limited accounting experience, I would need to ask lots of questions to allow me to complete tasks. There were also lots of other interns working for PwC at the same time, so we organised social events during the internship.

Guidance on the administrative aspects of the internship was given by a Career coach and a buddy, both of whom offered regular meetings and support throughout the internship. In terms of the actual work, all members of the engagement team I worked with were very happy to help. If they did not know the answer, they knew someone who did. You have to be prepared to ask for advice though.

I always had work to do, there were multiple entities that needed auditing and I often worked on applying the same procedure to multiple entities. This was helpful in terms of learning, as the first one could be guided and then by the last one I understood what I was doing to a greater extent. The impetus was on me to ask for more work when I had completed my current tasks.

I was given the opportunity to work on pieces of work independently. These would then be reviewed by a manager who would sometimes give feedback on what I had done. The responsibility to be organised and schedule events was also left to me, which further made it feel that I was a member of the PwC team.

The work knowledge I gained is unsurprisingly unrelated to my physics degree, however I gained a valuable insight into the company as a whole. It also helped me make decisions about my career. It was also useful in helping me develop my personal skills, I was given some guidance in this respect by my Career coach.

The general atmosphere was very friendly, there was a wide range of ages working there. I spent most of my time on the client site, so most of my interactions were with the engagement team I was working with. They were also very friendly and happy to answer any questions I had.

Well organised (as can be expected from a large company). Joining information was dealt with efficiently, despite the fact I applied quite late. The residential at the start worked well with the large number of people in attendance, and was a useful introduction. Assigning tasks once we got to the office took a few days but there were tasks to do in that time.

As mentioned before, each intern had a Career coach who helped them choose goals and work on feedback. There was a residential induction with all of the interns in which specific training to the Line of Service was provided which was mostly useful. There was also a pre-course workbook to do. This was in order to help people who had never done accounting before to get up to speed.

Good, I would be happy to work there in the future. Although I do not think that I would like to do Audit (Assurance), during my internship I have found other aspects of the company that are more aligned with what I would like to do in the future (Data and Analytics). There is some opportunity to transfer the offer of a graduate role to another Line of Service, however this is limited.

The internship began with a three day residential induction at a hotel with all of the interns for that intake. This was a good way to meet people from all over the country, however I would have preferred to have had more of an opportunity to work with others during the training. During the actual internship itself, some of the interns regularly went on Friday socials and nights out. (Everyone was invited but some people couldn't make it etc.)

I lived in my student house over the summer so that was pretty cheap. Central Birmingham is not cheap but it was easy to arrange intern social events in price suitable locations (Wetherspoons). PwC allowed you to claim expenses back on travel, so that was useful for getting to the residential induction, which was in Windsor.

Birmingham is a big city with lots of bars etc.

I went to some intern social events, and there were a few other things organised, but we were only there for 6 weeks so there was not actually that much time to get involved in other activities. I imagine that if you were to go for a longer time there would be other activities.