Summer Assurance Intern Review

I really enjoyed getting such a fantastic insight into the company, including learning about the role and about the vast opportunities available when working for EY. It was really helpful hearing from such a diverse range of people and all of their presentations were engaging and useful. Obviously it's a shame that the in-person alternative couldn't happen, as nothing beats getting to know a company by being physically in the office, but this is definitely the best next thing.

The student recruitment team did a fantastic job of assisting everbody, answering their questions, giving their own insights into the company, and helping with technical issues when they arose. The mentors we had were fantastic at talking about their honest, down to Earth experiences and opinions and were really useful to ask questions. A huge emphasis was put on wellbeing and explaining the various support options available at EY - for example counsellors and exam mentors.

We had a couple of mentor meetings where we could discuss our case study, which were useful to ask clarifying questions, but I think it was a good idea to not provide too many details and leave the project scope intentionally a little bit vague to allow us to figure out how we should do it best. The various webinars helped us a lot in preparing for our case study and the presentation to the partner.

There were some skills I could take away to my degree, like how to present effectively, teamwork skills and wellbeing tips and tricks, however as was mentioned in one of the learning and development presentations, 70% of development comes from experience which clearly is limited by a one week experience. Perhaps the internship could have been longer, working with EY employees on a real life client project - even if we only input a little bit.

The internship was really well structured in my opinion, where in the first half of the day we had learning and development talks and webinars, and where in the afternoon we generally broke out into our project groups to discuss the case study. There were ample breaks, as well as fun sessions like quizzes mixed in with the other talks. Overall the internship ran relatively smoothly, which was impressive given all the moving parts involved.

The atmopshere amongst the interns was really good. Obviously with a virtual internship there is the potential for a disconnect between the interns and the speakers, but there was a good effort to keep everyone interested and engaged, by using menti and kahoot so we could show our thoughts and how we were feeling. In my team at least, we were all very enthused to have a go at the case study and there was a good atmosphere between us - I only wish it was a bit longer!

We had multiple learning and development sessions each day, which I found to be really useful, ranging from how to build a high performing team, to how to construct a punchy presentation. A lot of people gave up their time to pass on their expertise, and in the limited time of one week I learnt a lot about the company, the role and how much EY value their employees and their development. Again though I felt this was limited by the timeframe of the internship.

I got a good grasp of what it would be like to work for EY and the culture of the company. However, whilst there were Assurance employees talking to us, we weren't told as much about the actual work that they undertake. And then in our case study, I definitely felt like a lot of what we were talking about wouldn't fall under the Assurance service line - partly because we've never conducted an audit and don't know the ins and outs of the process.

I came away from the internship with a good grasp on the company culture, and it was good to hear from a range of people, in a range of locations. From this internship it is obvious to me how much EY puts in place to support their employees. I wish we'd heard more from employees in London, and for them to explicitly talk about the difference in culture - i.e. perhaps longer hours, types of clients and things like that.

I hoped this internship would give me a bigger insight into what I would like to do in the future, but because we didn't get to do any real client work I really can't tell if this is the career path for me. Whilst it was great to learn about the company, at the end of the day I need to know I enjoy the work which I unfortunately did not gain from this internship.

As the event was only a week long, there weren't any social events (and probably it wasn't long enough to warrant them). There were lots of networking events though - from asking questions in the large open sessions, to having smaller sessions with our mentors where we could speak up a bit more. I was in the UK&I sector but it would have been good to get the opportunity to speak to someone in FS to get their experiences.

We were told a great deal about the activities that employees can get involved in outside of work. This includes corporate responsibility days, where you can have days off to work on a charitable project, and about the social activities that all employees get involved with - whether that is drinks on a Friday, monthly meals, golf football etc. I wish we'd been told more about EY sports teams - i.e. where are they available and which sports.