Intern Review

While it was not what I expected, being a virtual 6 week internship rather than the 10 week technology internship due to Coronavirus, I still enjoyed the experience and gained valuable insight into how Tesco operates and how the people who work there see the company, eachother and customers. There were a variety of Leadership skill training sessions where we learned valuable skills such as Resilience and Presenting with Confidence and these included fun activities such as a virtual escape room.

We were split into groups of 10-11 people and inside these groups we were further split into subgroups of 3-4 people. I felt valued in the team with my input never being ignored or sidelined. Everyone was friendly and willing to help when that was necessary. The larger group was also friendly and there were many opportunities, some organised by Tesco and some by us interns, to interact with each other and get to know each other more.

I think the support given my our Line managers, Stephen and Dani, were great and they were always willing and prompt in replying to me when I had questions or issues. All of the people within the business we met were also great with supporting us and more than happy to receive emails with further queries or questions on what they had discussed with us. The only person who I think support was lacking from was our Project lead, who often took several days to reply and give us the necessary information for the project.

This is an area where I'm fairly torn on. There were some weeks where the balance of work was perfect and we had a variety of activities and project work to be getting on with however in the later weeks the amount of work we had to do dried up and while this might sound great to some people, getting paid to do little work, I do feel like there could've been more activities in those latter weeks to keep us engaged. However I was also eager to do the work early and so that may have also played into the fact there wasn't much left to do by the end.

I think considering this was a virtual internship and plans had to change at the last minute that the amount of responsibility we were given was good. While the project we did isn't going to directly impact Tesco it is entirely possible some of the ideas we came up with may be implemented in the future. I never felt like we weren't being taken seriously or that we were just doing busy work and can understand the lack of bigger projects due to time constraints.

I am very happy with how this internship has allowed me to develop my skills. Especially with the leadership training sessions. These were very useful and insightful and while some of the stuff in them may seem like common sense once you read it a lot of it is often missed so it was useful as a refresher. I definately think these skills will help me with employment once I graduate. One thing I don't think will be of much use is the e-learning which were mostly around security and best practices, while these weren't useless a lot of it was fairly simple and unnecessary to teach us in my opinion.

While I cannot talk about the atmosphere in the office itself since it was a virtual internship I can talk about the atmosphere on teams, in the chat and in calls. This was very relaxed and friendly for the most part. I always felt welcome and nobody was ignored or left out. The only real issues with atmosphere are more the fault of teams and the difficulties in not talking over each other and having a natural flowing conversation with multiple people.

The work placement organisation was not great but under the circumstances of the pandemic and how quickly plans needed to be changed it is understandable. In the first week or so there were many technical difficulties with us accessing systems such as work and pay and also websites such as insight out, which is used to find marketing, research and other material that the bussiness has published. However as the weeks went on this was largely cleared up and was well organised by the end.

I am very pleased with the amount of effort Tesco have put in to developing all of us as individuals. As I have previously mentioned there were a variety of leadership skills session and training sessions to develop our personal skills. The skills we learnt from the project work itself were also very valuable and useful to the future. I suppose the only thing that prevents this from being a ten is because it was more group based development and there wasn't more personal training, but this is really nitpicking given the circumstances.

While it is too early to know the specifics of this I have been told that there will be opportunities for future internship (since I am doing a masters i have 2 more years left) and graduate jobs at the company. We will be fast-tracked onto these programs skipping the interview and programming exercises and going straight to the discovery center, which is the final stage before selection for the programme. The future internship and graduate opportunities themselves look interesting and I am strongly considering taking them up on the offer.

The social scene between us interns was broadly good. We had a whatsapp chat and other social opportunities and did coffee roulette and other activities that were good for socializing. However I do feel like we didn't interact as much as we could have. Part of this is because this is a virtual internship and we were not able to visit the office and talk face to face and part of this is because there weren't a lot of small group activities where it would be easy on teams to communicate.

This is not applicable because it was a virtual internship.

This was not applicable because it was a virtual internship.

Overall there was a decent number of opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. We organised an art night where people would draw fruit and show their creations. We also chatted a bit outside of work but because of the virtual nature of the internship and none of us being able to meet face to face there were not as many opportunities as i would have liked. But this cannot really be blamed on Tesco themselves.