Assurance Intern Review

I was thoroughly impressed with the internship programme. I expected to be busy and get to experience aspects of the graudate job, but I did not anticipate the level of integration. After the first week of training (which is intensive) you are assisting with real jobs and are a valuable part of the audit team. I got to work with lots of different people and I was given jobs that were my responsibility to see to completion. I also got to experience other areas of the business after asking about these. I didn't expect to be able to drive my own experience as much as I did.

On every job that I worked I felt like a valued member of the team who got to make a real contribution to the audit process. The office was incredibly social and myself and the other interns were included in several office lunches, dinners and nights out.

I had my own work to do but was never left without help. Questions were encouraged by everyone I met, from the tutors to the partners. I was also assigned a buddy (a first year graduate) for every day questions, and a people manager to guide me and oversee my progress. If I ever had a problem with anything I found that I could ask anyone I was working with and I never felt like a hindrance to anyone.

For the most part I was very busy on jobs, and when there was not as much work I could catch up with in-company e-learns and compliance training. However, there were some occassions when I struggled to find enough work to keep me going throughout the day. These were few and far between, as most days I had plenty of tasks to work through.

I was responsible for completing my work on time and managing audit jobs with my own training and objectives. In instances where those in charge thought I was capable of handling more responsibility I was given it. However, never to the point that I felt overwhelmed. The benefit of there being so many staff in a large firm is that there will always be the support you need.

I was able to apply knowledge from my degree course every day and many of the concepts that I have studied in university were used in my internship. I gained a much better understanding of company accounts and will be able to use this in the rest of my studies, as well as improved communication, time management and excel skills that I will be able to use throughout my career.

There were several office social events during my time there such as race nights, a special lunch for the Wimbledon final, breakfast to celebrate the opening of the Commonwealth Games, team dinners and office promotion drinks. Aside from social events, the atmosphere was friendly and productive. A lot of very young, motivated people work for PwC so it creates an expectation of hard work but also of friendly collaboration.

The internship was incredibly well organised and put together. We got to go to Edinburgh and London for development and conclusion days and it was clearly well run. However, there was occasionally poor communication about travel details for the larger trips, and sometimes people were switched from job to job quite last minute. I would be surprised if there were not these kind of incidents with such a large programme, though.

I think no expense was spared in ensuring we were well trained and clear on our work and it was obvious from the start that the company wanted to you to come back to work for them and were training you for a future role.

Before leaving on the last day you are told whether or not you have recieved a job offer. This is contingent on achieving a 2:1 degree in your fourth year but the security of having a job offer before you go back to university is a huge positive.

The interns all really quickly got along and despite us having mixed personalities and interests we socialised a lot throughout our placement and I look forward to working with them again next year.

Glasgow is a reasonable city with plenty of shops and restaurants and a great atmosphere.

There is a good selection of nightlife in Glasgow, and Edinburgh is only a train journey away to add variety!

There were several events on throughout our time and we were always made welcome to join in. There was also a regular office 5-a-sides football team that we were invited to.