Tax - Human Resource Consulting Review

It was completely different as to what I expected, in a good way. As opposed to photocopying or printing, everything I did was either for company projects or client work. The work itself was very interesting, and relevant to my field of study. I also had a chance to visit the client site and see how they held their internal meetings, and how we used data from that meetings in our work for them.

The staff at PwC were very helpful. Everyone I met was very welcoming and interested in what I had to say. I could approach anyone for help when I was stuck and I would get the required support from them. For the work I was assigned to, the staff gave me a good introduction and helped me at each and every stage. My team was very helpful and welcoming, and we had a lively atmosphere where I was more than welcome to share my ideas. I was assigned a buddy and my buddy together with other graduates in the department helped me feel at home, as I attended various events and lunches with them.

My managers helped me in each and every task I carried out. During the tasks, I would have frequent meetings to discuss what I had been working on, any problems I had run into and how we could go about solving them. After the task was complete, we would have a formal evaluation where my strengths would be brought out and I would be told what I could have done better, which would help me in managing my next task even better.

There was generally enough work for me during the normal day. On most days, I had the perfect mix of tasks and meetings on my plate so that I wouldn't be overwhelmed with the work. I would also be given deadlines well in advance and this helped me time my plan accordingly. I had quite a lot of flexibility in terms of my schedule and due to this, I would be able to ensure that I wouldn't have projects that would clash. However, there were a couple of days when I had relatively no work to do and was sitting idle for some hours during those days.

For the projects I was working on, I was given quite a lot of responsibility. There was analytic task where I was provided with raw data brief instructions and was asked to draw any relevant conclusions from it, which I expect would represent a typical task for a permanent member of staff. On another project, my work would be shown directly to the clients and though it had to go through quality control, this made me quite cautious about getting it correct.

I learnt many skills during the internship that will benefit me in all aspects of life. One of them is organisational skills. I learnt how to create a calendar and managed to use it effectively to manage my time. I also learnt many new functionalities of spreadsheets and many concepts which will be covered in my final year. We received training for the first 3 days in which we covered quite a lot of technical material that was helpful while we were working for the rest of the internship.

The office atmosphere was generally very positive. Everyone was calm and relaxed, and everyone would talk to one another. There would be the occasional team or office activity where everyone would be welcome. As this was during summer, there were a couple of days when many people in the office would be on holiday, and in these times, the office would be quite quiet.

The structure of the internship was really good. In the beginning, we had a three day training session which was at an external site. After this we had a formal induction at the office and set ourselves up with the systems. As soon as we were understanding the processes, the tasks were given to us. The tasks themselves were well organised, as the work itself was not overwhelming. Instead each part of the task would be introduced to us by a member of staff, and we would receive good support during the staff. During the internship, we had a development to develop our soft skills. We also had a "Dragon's Den" event where a few selected ideas based on a topic which we were told during our training session were presented. After this we had the last day of the internship, where we had an exit interview.

The firm had external locations for most of the events where we had to go. They set up a separate day to develop our soft skills. For technical skills, the first three days were a good crash course on what we would know, but the concepts would be reiterated when we worked on a task which would require them.

During the exit interview, I was offered a job within the company. I would be glad to take this opportunity as this experience has been phenomenal for me.

Yes. We had a good relation between all the internship students. Even though we were based in different offices around UK, we would regularly speak to one another to resolve any queries or just to catch up with one another. During the Annual Ball, we managed to spend time with one another and bonded quite well.

As I live in London, I was lucky not to pay for rent, but due to the Central London location, the rent would be very expensive. Also, socialising around the river (where the office is located) is quite pricey, but there were a few restaurants around that were reasonable too.

The nightlife in London is fantastic. Not only is there a great variety of music, but there are many things to do apart from clubbing, for example viewing London by night.

There were many socials that I went for with graduates from the firm, but apart from the socials, there weren't many events advertised in the office to take part in.