Intern Review

My team did not seem to care that I was around and so I struggled to find work to do. Most of the work I did was simple admin stuff. There were days when I found myself idle for the whole 7 hour work day. I could have helped my team with their tasks, but people seemed to think that I was not capable of doing work.

I received guidance from my team members I worked with. This was useful in completing the few tasks I was given. However, compared to placements I did at rival firms, I felt that we did not receive enough guidance from HR. The conversion process into a graduate position was not clear. Moreover, for some reason, unlike other interns, I was only allocated a buddy on the day I joined. Others had been in contact with their buddies already.

Unfortunately, interning in the tax department did not help me in my endeavour to become an actuary. However, I did network with a few actuaries and this provided with vital information regarding the role of consulting actuaries in industry.

There seemed to be no structure at all. For starters, we were left on our own after the service line specific training and were not told what we should do. The fact that I had not been allocated a mentor complicated matters more. Secondly, my team were not aware that they would have an intern before I walked in the department. This meant that they had no work for me in the first couple of days. Finally, people from student recruitment always seemed to be late for social events, leaving us interns on our own to figure out where we should go.

I found the atmosphere in tax very dull. That may be because most people were on holiday. On the whole, I felt very much alienated and did not feel part of the company. This is the exact opposite of how I felt in my internship at a rival firm earlier that summer, where socials were well structured and where the team valued my inputs.

We had one day of training with all the interns and another half day with our service lines. The training did not prepare me for what my department was doing. During my other internship we had 3 days of service line specific training which prepared us for our roles.

By networking with interns from other departments I got to know the culture across different service lines. However, my team did not make any effort to introduce me to the culture.

By working in tax, I realised that this was not the role for me. However, networking with actuaries really encouraged me to go in that direction.

The opportunities were very scarce. I already knew some people working full time for deloitte and I sought their help when I wanted to meet people from other departments. The so called networking events did little to help us with that.

They could have been made a lot more fun had people from student recruitment actually bothered about organising them properly. The dinner we had was in a cramped place and most people stuck to their own tables as it was difficult to move around. A better location would have made networking easier. Also, we did not meet a lot of senior members of staff during the internship, which would really have been enriching.

The only activities I heard of were the friday night drinks. I did hear about the opportunities to play sports, but that was from a family member who works for Deloitte.

Given how badly structured this was and the fact that it occurs over only 3 weeks, I would not recommend this to a friend. 3 weeks is too short to bond with the team when the internship has no structure and gives little indication of what working at deloitte is like. People would be better off spending their summer doing a longer, better structured internship, This internship would be good as a last resort for one seeking to gain some work experience.