Finance Intern at L'Oreal Review

I extremely enjoyed my placement. You are given responsibility from day one and provided with a wide range of different tasks which you are able to work on. I completed my internship in the Welsh Office and the people there are incredible. You are offered so much support, and you can build good strong relationships. I was able to build so much confidence and L'Oréal really look after their employees which is so good to see. I would really recommend taking up an internship in L'Oréal and I would still want to work for them in the future.

Being in a smaller office, I felt so valued by my colleagues. They did become such a massive part of how much I enjoyed my internship. The colleagues I would work with on a daily basis, made me feel so worthy to be there and they never once questioned my abilities. That's why I think I was able to grow so much in confidence over the year. My manager would support my develop and make sure she would provide me with feedback when I needed it.

Despite working closely with my manager, obviously they are usually in senior positions which also makes them extremely busy. My manager would check up and make sure that I was doing ok, but I felt that most of my support and guidance came from the colleague who I worked the closest with. She was fantastic! She would always put in so much time and effort to making sure that I knew what I was doing. I never felt like I was left on my own, but my support didn't necessarily always come from my manager.

I had a steady amount of work, being in Finance month ends were always my busiest time. There would definitely have been days that I would have preferred to have more tasks given to me. For the first couple of months my day was pretty much filled up but as you got more familiar with the role you will become quicker and completely tasks and maybe this is where I realised I wasn't as busy as I would have liked to be.

I was given a wide range of responsibility from the word go. I would be given tasks that I would work on to complete and I had the opportunity to present the tasks I worked on to senior leadership. However, it does depend on the individual I think that you have to be willing to ask for more responsibility if that's what you want. I do feel that your managers will be cautious that you are an intern so might not necessarily provide you with extremely important tasks just in case. That does make sense, but I think a lot of interns have a large amount of potential and that should be developed.

You will gain such a variety of different skills, and develop on the ones you already have. Your communication and teamwork skills will improve massively as you are working within a group on a daily basis. However, you have the opportunity to take this a step further and communicate and network with those outside of your usual remit. My excel skills improved so much too! You are offered training for whatever you feel you need and can take a variety of different courses to better yourself and your skills.

The atmosphere within my office varied on a day to day basis. Being in an smaller office it was always very close knit which was nice, and being an intern and starting your first full time job made you feel at ease. I would say that most of the time the office was quite quiet but that's because everyone is busy and sometimes there was only a hand full in! During month end, everyone was focused and you did appreciate the quiet more then! However, overall it was lovely. You would always be made to feel like you fitted in and that was great.

Being a Finance Intern, I felt like the sometimes our sector was overshadowed by marketing and commercial where there is more interns. I always knew what I was going to be doing and if there were events etc being hosted. However, for me I felt like it could have been slightly better. I was in a different office to the Head Office so I never was really able to go to the social events that were being held. Once we were offered our placements, I found out reasonable quickly who my manager was going to be and what department which was good.

I feel like the company really invest in your personal training and development. We had to do reviews with our manager so that we could set personal goals and objectives and discuss with them how we think we can work towards them over the next few months. These would be reviewed at the next review session. You had numerous amount of opportunities to sign up for different courses if you wanted too so that you could gain different skills and we had access to a large range of online activities we could do to make sure we are up to date with all of our knowledge.

There are two main types of future employment following on from your placement. They have a graduate scheme (Management Trainee) in a variety of different functions and also a talent pool. A few months before your internship is due to end, you will be able to have a chat with your manager and decide how you feel about a future career with them, and make the decision which one you feel is more suited for you as a person. The 2 schemes focus on different attributes. Considering the amount of interns they hire, they are only a small proportion of those who will be offered a graduate role but that is made clear from the get go so you have the ability to make your internship worth while.

Considering there was only myself and another intern in the Office I was in, I would say that the social scene wasn't the best. However, I made the decision to complete my internship in Wales so it was expected that the social scene wouldn't be as good as if I had completed my internship in London. I did see events that were being held by fellow placement students so I think if you were in London you would definitely have the opportunity to take part in those.

I was in an Office with only one more intern and I lived at home during my placement and commuted in about 35 miles. Therefore, I am not sure how I can review the cost of living and socialising as it wasn't something I would've done very much. However, from chatting to people in the Office I wouldn't have said that it was very expensive and it was obviously much cheaper than being in London but you could also catch a train to Cardiff Central if you wanted more of a city feel.

As discussed previously, I wouldn't have gone out much in the area around where I worked. However, if you wanted to you could go to Cardiff Central and have a night out there if you wanted too. This would all depend where you lived. There are a lot of different clubs, bars and restaurants to look at, with a lot of them doing different deals which can make it cheaper! I would say it is not amazing, but Cardiff definitely has a nightlife scene.

There always seemed to be opportunities to get involved in different activities outside of work. Finance always held regular Finance meetings which did entail different quizzes. They also put on a Finance excellence day which meant I was able to go to a racecourse in London and take part in an inflatable obstacle course - it was one of the hottest days of the year when I was doing this so it wasn't as enjoyable! I