Assurance Intern Review

The EY Summer Internship was a fantastic experience. It was clear lots of planning had gone into the programme, with clear opportunity and direction provided. The work experience provided was of a top quality. I benefitted from relevant and interesting training, a helpful counsellor to nurture me through the process, and an abundance of work experience that gave me the opportunity to engage with real-life clients every day of my Internship through a variety of interesting tasks. Other important factors in this rating include the various successful social events that were organised by EY, the Corporate Social Responsibility day we attended, and the concluding end of Internship ball.

EY made it very clear from the outset they are a firm who value inter-colleague relations. Every team I worked with on my Internship were extremely friendly. They were willing to answer any questions and queries, and assist with my tasks if necessary. It was extremely satisfying to be delegated stimulating work on my Internship.

Feedback was a very important factor in my Internship. Management were always willing to provide either informal verbal feedback on pieces of work, or formal written pieces. I found feedback to be sufficiently detailed, providing real insight into how I can improve my work.

Every day, I knew I was coming into work with tasks to do. I found on the whole, managers delegated me a sensible amount of work, with my timesheets consistently clocking up between 35-40 hours of chargeable work a week. I rarely spent any time idle, however when this happened momentarily, I completed recommended work to enhance my skills provided by the central Internship programme.

During my Internship, I regularly did work that was utilised by my colleagues. I was also given the opportunity to directly speak with clients, working through queries that I had following my work.

I came into this Internship wanting an insight into a potential career I was interested in taking up. I feel the technical skills I acquired through this Internship, will help me as I take up graduate employment, given some accounting specific skills I will use. As well as this, the chance to be part of a working team and the opportunities to show leadership were invaluable. Transferrable skills such as report writing and summarising large amounts of information will also be invaluable as I complete the final year of my degree studies.

I felt the office atmosphere to be an ideal one to work in. My rating of 7 reflects the fact 10/10 is described as "Fun never stopped". The majority of the time, the office was as expected a serious environment. However, post-work drinks and communal lunch breaks were a regular occurance, meaning when appropriate, it was a fun office atmosphere.

I found this part of my Internship to be extremely impressive. EY had employees specifically working on this. Two social events, a Corporate Social Responsibility Day, and an end of Internship ball were all provided for us, and these were all excellent seamless events. Additional opportunities such as shadowing and meeting partners of the firm were also available.

We had three days of training, which spanned a variety of areas. We were inducted into the vision of the firm, and many transferable skills were developed, such as networking and writing. We were then given a specific I.T. workshop, and a service line training session. I found this investment to be a valuable and necessary one, setting us up to be better workers on our Internship.

This Internship was taken with a view of graduate employment being a realistic possibility. At the end of our Internship, we met with our Counsellor to discuss our performance (rated by feedback), which was then relayed to HR. Interns who perform well are offered graduate placements.

This Internship provided a great opportunity to build friendships with fellow Interns. Significant praise must be given to EY for facilitating socials for everyone, giving a good medium to develop these relationships. This was essential for me as due to the nature of my service line, I didn't directly work directly with any other Interns. It was great to have solid friendships throughout the Internship, supporting each other and engaging in knowledge transfer.

Living in London, the cost of living and socialising was inevitably expensive. However, the salary provided was enough to cover this, leaving some surplus as well.

London contains an array of opportunities for nightlife. I managed to engage in a variety of the options, such as the arts, leisure, restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

On our Internship, we were told about the many networks within EY. I know of many Interns who got involved in sports teams during our 6 weeks. I expect this will be even easier and more important once in graduate employment.