Design and Communications Review

Such a great placement for meeting new people as there's such a big early career community. As the community is so big, there's so many opportunities and programmes to get involved with.

The community allowed me to feel supported by other interns. In my team, I felt my input was really valued and I was constantly reassured of this with feedback I got on the work I was putting in

HPE are very engaged in the development of interns. I felt really supported by my manager with constant feedback and advice.

Varies on busy times in the quarter. Some weeks were extremely busy but even on less busy weeks there were no boring days as if there's not as much work to do, you are encouraged to focus on personal development.

I was given a lot of responsibility in my role as a part of big company-wide projects.

I have learnt so much by putting learnings from my degree into real professional practice. My confidence has also grown throughout the year in my work and what kind of direction I want to go in the future. The skills I have developed will definitely assist me when I eventually apply for graduate jobs as throughout the year I was able to be involved in the recruiting process for new interns and sit in on interviews.

The office had a really friendly atmosphere, you could go to anyone's desk and ask for advice or feedback if you needed it. There are also a lot of social spaces such as coffee stations, canteens etc that you could have a break from work. I also really enjoyed the flexibility of traveling to different offices such as in London and Ireland. This gave me the opportunity to see how different offices work and meet even more people.

There is a good structure for programmes within the internship such as development days and mentoring. I think the organisation really helped to get the most out of us as interns with these initiatives. They worked to help us get to grips with not only our own role but also different areas of the business, which was a really good networking tool. There was some struggle in the unprecedented move to working remotely but I think it was handled as well as it could be.

Personal training and development was really emphasised during my internship. We had the opportunity to attend development days and sessions to work on a variety of skills. We were also encouraged to volunteer and fundraise. These activities are really helpful in building up our CV's. The mentor programme was a highlight for me as it allowed me to really see into another area of the business that I had an interest in and my mentor encouraged me to do things out of my comfort zone!

Most future employment prospects are graduate roles in sales, which is an area I have no interest in. If there were job prospects in areas like marketing and design I would be really interested in returning as I really like these business units of the company. I think location is a big factor in the future employment prospects also. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the London office and I would love to work there, however the Reading office isn't an ideal location for me.

As there so many interns, apprentices and grauates, the social scene is really good among everyone, even just the fact that we would eat lunch together every day. We made efforts to organise social events outside of work at least once a month. Finishing early on the second Friday of every month encouraged everyone to use that time to organise social gatherings together. I really enjoyed my internship socially and I met some friends for life!

Personally, I had to live with a group of other interns because we were too far from home to commute. I found the pricing of rent comparable to other university towns and our salary allowed for us to still have quite a lot of money leftover after covering our rent. As we worked and lived in a university town, nightlife wasn't expensive either. I think overall, cost of living and socialising was average throughout the year.

As it's a uni town the nightlife is quite good, however, most students go to the student union which we couldn't access without accompanied by a member of the uni. I'd say it was average most nights, it wasn't too expensive and there are quite a few options of bars and clubs to go to. The highlight is that there's so many interns/apprentices to organise nights out with and it's good to go with a big group.

The company didn't organise much outside of work other than a few volunteering events throughout the year that you could sign up for. They have created an intern committee and within that there is a social and networking team. Their role was to organise different things for early career memebers to get involved with and they worked to organise a few events and opportinities outside of work. In the local town, there wasn't much to get involved with other than socialising.