Intern Review

Very much enjoyed the experience, the team here in Birmingham were incredibly kind and helpful, a lot of fun to work with. Very relaxed working environment and very social, lots of after work drinks and even a summer party thrown in as well! You are really made to feel as though you are part of the team.

As mentioned above, my colleagues, from day one, really made me feel as though I was a part of the team, getting me involved in work, projects, and inviting me to team socials and drinks out. I'm definitely going to be very sad to be leaving this great bunch of people.

The support is absolutely amazing, probably one of the best things about the firm actually. My career coach could not have been better, incredibly kind and helpful and really felt as though he cared about me. No question was too stupid to ask, and it really felt as though my colleagues were invested in getting me to have the best experience possible.

Due to the nature of the summer months in the accountancy/tax business, I wasn't that busy for the duration of my six weeks at the firm. Colleagues tried to get me involved in as much as possible, and there were busy periods, but there were also quite a few quiet periods where there just wasn't enough work for me to do.

Responsibilities varied during the internship, at times you would be doing bottom of the barrel excel spreadsheets inputting, and at other times you would be doing business development research on multi-million pound clients. It really varies on the day and the person you are doing the work for at the time.

As my degree is Chinese Studies, there will not be very much in the way of useful things I can take out of this internship, however when it comes to taking up a full-time position at the end, the skills I've learnt during my time here will be invaluable, and the headstart in knowledge of tax will be very useful as well.

The stars don't lie. In the Birmingham office every day was genuinely non-stop fun, whether it was having constant debates about who to put in your fantasy football team for the coming weekend, discussing what happened on last night's episode of love island or just having an informal chat about work, the atmosphere was always very relaxed and open.

The internship itself was set up and organised decently well, there were clear goals and guidelines, as well as a timetable for development and reaching these goals. The only thing that could really be improved would be letting the team know further in advance of the interns' arrival so that they could put aside work for them much earlier.

The training and development side is very good here. Colleagues are always willing to take half an hour or so out of their day to teach you something new, the online resources are all very useful, and PwC regularly holds lectures or seminars or training days to enable their employees to grow.

Future employment prospects are very very good following on from your internship. I myself was offered a graduate position at the firm following my internship. The rule of thumb essentially is as long as you don't majorly mess up during your internship, you will be offered a position, as the selection process for interns and graduates is essentially identical.

The social scene was one of the main plus points about being here, both in the context of the other interns that were and in the context of the rest of my team. As most of the interns were local to the area, we went out most weekends after work on the friday, and as my team were very young, after-work drinks were the norm. It was great.

Because its Birmingham, the cost of living is very very reasonable, apartments here are much cheaper than in london and buying food and drinks is also very reasonable. Public transport around the area isn't the cheapest, but if you live close to the centre you can walk everywhere you like.

Having never been out in Birmingham before I had heard a lot of things about how good the nightlife was, and it did not disappoint. There's both a really good student scene and a more chill bar scene where the young professionals tend to go after work. There's a night out for everyone here.

During the internship there weren't really that many opportunities to get involved with things outside work, however that's mainly due to the internship only being 6 weeks long, which isn't really enough time to get involved in anything major. When you are a graduate, there are endless opportunities to get involved in charity, sports, pantomimes, fundraising etc.