Intern Review

I started out thinking it was going to be a great opportunity and it seemed as though there would be plenty of things I would learn by doing the role, but I soon realised that it was just retail disguised as a management scheme and had horrible working hours and was all round a horrible job.

I found my colleagues to be very self-interested and not very friendly. Considering we worked 10+ hour days, everyone still seemed like they didn't really like each other and it was a very fake, hostile environment where everyone was more bothered about their own self-gain within the company.

I found the management on the surface to pretend to care about you and have lots of guidance for you, however, I later found this was not the case. They were pretty toxic and only really cared about you making your branch money because it related to their commission. If you were unhappy at work, they did not really try to find a way to help you but just expected more of you.

How busy I was day to day varied. Some days I would be rushed off my feet being expected to deliver cars in the shortest amount of time and being encouraged by colleagues and managers to break speed limits in order to do so. Other times there would be nothing to do except be in the office calling customers confirming their bookings.

We were given quite a bit of responsibility, being expected to deliver cars ourselves, and sell extra products to customers. Additionally, we were expected to do a late shift in the branch by ourselves, being entrusted with the branch keys and having to lock up ourselves and putting the alarm on.

I gained more confidence throughout doing the placement, however, I don't think I generally developed much in the way of skills. In theory, it would give you the opportunity to develop your sales skills if you thrived off a target-driven environment. However, I found that I was not given much support in order to achieve the unrealistic targets set for us.

People were constantly moving and quitting the job so there was often a strange atmosphere in the office because you hardly knew your colleagues or the ones you'd worked with for a while were hostile to becoming friendly. There was generally an atmosphere of dislike for the job in the office so it wasn't great to be in.

There was a very structured path to the placement as there was a training programme to complete based on three stages of various tasks you had to prove that you had done. This was set up well but it meant that there was not any room to adapt it to the individual person and thus didn't work for me.

We had a 3 day initial training with a paid hotel and paid meals followed by the theoretical guidance through the training folder and regular 30 day, 90 day, 6 month, 8 month etc training. Aside from this though, the training was fairly minimal and in the office you were very much left to your own devices.

The future employment prospects within this organisation relied around retail management and it is very difficult to attain any other kind of role within the company that does not relate around working within a retail environment and is office-based. Overall, you are expected to put a lot of time and effort in when starting in the company, working 50+ hours a week to later get more benefits when you become an area manager. However, this takes years of hard work and is not attainable for most people.

Not really, the general atmosphere of the company is that people don't want to be friends with each other and don't want to know each other outside of work. There are organised social events every now and then but they feel very forced and management are also present so it does not feel relaxed enough to make connections with colleagues.

I lived in a northern city so it was generally fairly cheap to live and socialise where I lived. However, as it is a job based at any branch in any UK city, the cost of living and socialising really depends on the city that you choose to live in.

As I lived in a northern city, there was a decent nightlife scene. Again, this varies between where you work as you could live and work in any city in the UK where there are Enterprise branches. Therefore, it's not much different to nightlife at whichever University that you choose.

There weren't many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. There wasn't anything that was organised extra-curricularly outside of work, especially not with any colleagues. Regarding the rest of life, activities it really varies on what city that you live and work in and was not really related to the job.