Intern Review

I really enjoyed the internship this summer. It was a great programme and I thought all of the work was really interesting. The other people on the internship were really friendly and I enjoyed living in central London. The other possible downside that I could mention is that there was not enough work for me. At times, I did feel like there was not enough work for me because I did not have the necessary training.

Most of the people there were willing to help and they always were very friendly, so by the end I felt like I could approach any of them with any problems. At first, the environment was quite daunting but everyone made me feel very welcome and they always gave me feedback regarding my performance and how to improve. The general feeling was that the employees are well valued by the company.

During the internship, there was a lot of support and guidance provided, all the way from HR to my line manager. I always felt like there were several people that I could turn to for help and I did on several specific issues with HR, who were very understanding and gave me what I wanted to make me comfortable. Also, I had a buddy who was only a few years older than me and had been though the same stages as me only a couple of years ago and so gave me lots of useful guidance.

The amount of work that I had really varied from day to day. On some days, I only really had general administration work, whereas on others I was given a lot of work and had to stay behind to complete it all. I also had an individual project for the duration of the internship which meant that I was always had something to do as whenever it was a quiet day, I could work independently on my project.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility for the tasks that I was assigned to and this really made me feel valued and part of the team. I think that this was a good amount of responsibility to challenge me without putting too much pressure on me. I am sure that if I joined full-time, the amount of responsibility grows steadily greater throughout the first couple of years as it seems like the company places a lot of trust in its employees.

To be honest, the skills and work that I did does not relate directly to my degree course and so will probably not help me that much at university. However, I did learn some really useful skills that I don’t think it is possible to learn at university or in a classroom and I am sure that this will help me once I start working. I would recommend that students do an internship because there are so many transferrable skills that you can get.

The general atmosphere in the office was quite friendly, and it was very sociable which meant that even the most boring work was quite enjoyable. However, everyone was also very focussed on their work and different desks had their own dynamics. I think this is one of the aspects that the internship really helps you to get an understanding of that would not be possible without being on such an internship.

The internship was very well set up as we were given lots of scheduled training sessions at the start and then we joined our teams so we could contribute right from the start. Once I joined my team, I also was given an individual project so that in between the gaps when I did not have any work set, I could work on my project at my own pace. We also had regular social events which was quite fun.

As I mentioned before, there was lots of training at the start of the internship before I joined my team which was very beneficial to gain skills and an overview of the company. This was quite intense as they had to cover a lot of information to bring us up to speed in quite a short amount of time. If we had more time, I think that we would have gone through everyone more thoroughly and in more detail.

The nightlife was really good as you would expect in London. However, everything was quite expensive and the cost of socialising was much higher than other places. Everywhere was really busy in the evenings and on the weekends. All of the interns went for drinks together every week so that we could get to know each other outside of work, and sometimes we even had social events with people from the company.