Commercial Intern Review

I really enjoyed my time at Redgate. There is a fantastic and friendly company culture, and the pay and benefits were also a big bonus. The company does free breakfast and lunch for everyone, which over 10 weeks has saved me a lot of money. The work I have been doing has also been varied and challenging at times which is exactly what I would have wanted.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues. I was in the Commercial team who were a very friendly bunch of people. you could go up and start a conversation with any of them and they would be happy to talk. My colleagues also made me feel like my work was providing value to the business which was a great feeling for me.

My intern manager was fantastic. From early on he made us do a lot of stand ups and take action points away from every meeting to ensure that we were being as productive as possible. My manager also cared a lot about my personal development, despite not needing to do this. He helped me work on skills that I would find useful, whether I wanted to come back to Redgate or go anywhere else.

My daily schedule was varied so of course some days were busy and others less so. The start and end of the internship contained a lot of meetings which kept me busy but I enjoyed this. We were given enough freedom to take on as many or as little tasks as we wanted to do so you can be as busy as you want to be.

I was given much more responsibility than I expected. In my final project I sold products to real customers. There was no work shadowing or anything like that, everything we did we had full control of right from the start. The culture here also allowed us to arrange a presentation for management even though this wasn't originally planned. It was great to have been given opportunities to take on challenging tasks.

I do a very technical degree, which doesn't equip you with the necessary communication skills for you career later on. This internship allowed me to interact with all areas of the business and with customers so I have been able to get these communication skills that I couldn't have got from my degree. We also did a lot of data analysis which is invaluable experience in a numerical degree.

It is an extremely fun atmosphere. The culture is very relaxed, which in a weird way has made me more productive. We often get random messages through with things like "free ice cream in the atrium now" which gave us really nice surprises throughout the summer. There was also a good air con system which helped through the heatwaves so you could say the physical atmosphere was also pretty good too.

When we arrived, everything was set up for us immediately and so we could get started on anything immediately. We also had inductions with all the relevant facilities departments early on so we didn't have any problems in that regard. I would say a little more organisation could have been done about the specific projects we were doing but this wasn't too bad as it allowed us to tailor our projects in the direction we wanted to go in.

During onboarding,I felt like I could have had a little more assistance getting to know the products but there is only so much time you can spend on that if I am only there for 10 weeks. Beyond that I received a lot of support from my manager about what skills I wanted to develop during the internship and what we could do to make that happen.

There is no official graduate scheme at Redgate (within Commercial anyway) so it can seem like there's no direct career prospects. However, the business is growing quickly and they are currently hiring a lot of new starters so they are actively looking for more people. From what my manager and others have said, if I really wanted a job here, all I would really need to do is ask and something could be arranged.

All the interns were very social and willing to do activities. A group of us interns would each lunch together every day and go on many trips to the pub after work. We were also given money from the company to fund an evening out for all the interns and almost everyone managed to make it along to this and we had a great time.

Cambridge is very expensive for accommodation. All the colleges are set up for tourists so are ridiculously expensive and far too much to rent for 10 weeks. Most people went for AirBnB's or similar as they were affordable. It is also a fairly expensive city for socialising. I've found a lot of pints to be around the £4.75 mark for context.

Redgate is in Cambridge which isn't exactly a hub for nightclubs etc. It is a great city for food and drink however, with so many pubs and restaurants near the office and in town. Cambridge is full of people so it can feel vibrant in the city even on quieter days of the week

The company ran a lot of free events across the summer. In our first week we had a company expo and a summer party with everything paid for. I also got to go on a company-funded team day out within my team along with an interns evening out. There was also starting and leaving drinks set up for us. These were more social rather than particular activities.