Shadow a Female Leader Insight Review

The insight programme did prove a bit of a struggle for me. Primarily, because I discovered that Tax Accounting definitely wasn't for me, and I didn't like being part of such a competitive, ruthless corporate environment. However, I did also have a pretty dire experience with the recruiters prior to the insight so I was not in the most positive mind frame entering the insight. I would have liked to have a more structured insight programme - perhaps a project to undertake - but the programme was slightly haphazard; as a result of this, I felt like I spent quite a lot of time just sitting around without an awful lot to do.

The firm were very welcoming. During my time there, everyone was very friendly and happy to set up meeting times with me to discuss their job/their career path etc. I'm sure not that I was particularly valued, and felt like most of the tasks I was given were menial and used to fill my time, rather than offer anything particularly useful to the firm.

I had the opportunity to have one-on-one chats with a few employees, who told me about their experiences at the firm and how they got into their current jobs. It was through this that I received a level of guidance - in terms of learning from people's personal experiences, and little bits of advice they gave me. I did not, however, receive much guidance or support in the actual work I was doing; this ties in with the fact that I felt that I was doing tasks to keep myself occupied (so everyone else could get on with their work!) rather than inputting anything particularly useful.

I don't think I gained many skills that will assist me in my degree studies or beyond - mainly, because I wasn't responsible for carrying out many/any challenging tasks or learning much about the operational day-to-day environment. The thing I learnt about most was what it's like to work in a corporate environment - what general attitudes exist, what a work life is like and how you work your way to the top.

Aside from 3 or 4 arranged one-to-one meetings with employees, the rest of the insight was pretty poorly structured. I felt like I was just being passed round to sit in on phone calls rather than developing a level of knowledge or undertaking a useful project. The structure, in terms of recruitment and post-insight feedback, was and is appalling. I was required to send my joining forms (of which there are more than you need to fill out for a full time job at MI5) to the recruiter on 3 separate occasions because they were either too early (which seemed strange after they'd sent me 4 emails stating the absolute urgency!) or they lost them. When these forms took several hours to fill out, this was completely unacceptable. There have been several points during the course of recruitment where I was tempted to send an e-mail and say that I was no longer interested in the insight, simply because of the unreasonable amount of effort and time the recruitment was taking. Furthermore, this insight was paid - but I was due to be paid 5 days ago and have still not received payment. After having spent a lot of money on train tickets etc during the insight, and generally being a poor student, it's proving fairly difficult to be without this money. I'm left seeing the firm as inefficient - and feel like they would have been speedy to pay me if there was something in it for them.

The general atmosphere was pretty dull: I think this is heavily influenced by the fact that I, very early on, realised that this job/department/environment was not for me.

My role during the insight was primarily observational. Partly because of the hectic environment, and partly because of the complexity of the job, I didn't feel like I really gained from any sort of personal development or training. Perhaps if the insight had been longer, this would have been better.

I left feeling like I had a fairly good insight into the range of jobs within the department - and the sort of lives these employees lead.

I got a pretty good taste for what the company culture was like - and then decided that I had too much social conscience to endure it. As I'm sure is the case with the rest of the Big 4, and other finance-based firms, the competition is extraordinary - and the race to the top is ruthless.

Aside from proving that I definitely didn't want to work in this department/firm/industry, I don't know that it helped me decide what I did want to do.

I was paid - see 'structure' question for feedback.

I met, and got to know, many employees in the firm. As previously stated, I had one-on-one meetings with 4 employees who all undertook different jobs within the department.

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I have no idea what the employees do outside of work! They seem to spend an awful lot of time at work...

A lot more trouble than it's worth!