Business Tax Intern Review

Everyone was really friendly and welcoming and tried to find me work to do. The reason I haven't given it full stars is because, often, I felt that not a lot of planning had gone in to what I would actually do on each day. Therefore, I was often allocated to a person who had nothing for me to do. Therefore, I often had to try hard to find some work to do. Often, this work didn't help to develop my actual tax knowledge

I was made to feel useful and that I could help my team members. People took the time to sit down and explain things to me in order that I could learn more, even though it was eating into their time

My counsellor was really helpful at looking at my goals list and helping to make sure I covered each goal. For example, she helped me to spend time on a tax audit. If there was anything I was unsure about whether I would be able to do, she helped make it happen. If I did have any problems I felt comfortable to go and ask her for help. I felt that all staff wanted me to do well

Probably the most annoying thing was how up and down my workload was - some days I had lots and lots to do but, on other days, there wasn't a lot for me to do. On most days I was busy and enjoyed the work I was doing. However, as we were put with different people each day, they often didn't have a lot of work for us to do. Therefore, more planning may have been helpful.

I was given responsibility to complete different tasks, such as admin tasks, emails, letters and research, which were then checked. I was very surprised that we were given responsibility to help complete computations. As I knew we could ask questions and everything would be checked, this gave me more confidence. Obviously we weren't given responsibility to do anything too serious as our knowledge and expertise isn't there.

As my degree is unrelated, the actual knowledge I learnt will not be particularly useful. However, time management, working as a team, juggling different tasks at once etc. are all skills that I have developed. However, I don't think it will profoundly assist me in my degree. It will, however, be useful when I start a job

The atmosphere was great - everyone was appropriately informal and very very friendly. Everyone seemed to get on well and I wasn't made aware of any inner office tensions. People in the office seemed relaxed and it was a very pleasant place to be. The summer office party was really fun and pictures went out in the breakout room after it. There was also two charity bake sales which people were encouraged to contribute to.

The internship was well organised in that I had a clear timetable when I started of who I would be with each day. We also received a very clear set of goals when starting. However, it often seemed that we had been randomly allocated to people as sometimes the people were not in, had just got back from holiday or didn't have much to do. People I was with often forgot that I was with them and often didn't have a lot of work for me to help them with. Therefore, this aspect could have been organised much better.

Individuals in the tax team definitely invested a lot of their time in sitting us down and explaining different aspects of tax to us. As we were only interns, we didn't get as much training in tax related things as you would if you were a graduate (understandably). Therefore, there was no EY led training that we received (bar the initial IT training on the first day). Rather, it was individual members of the tax team who really helped us to learn about different aspects of tax and the business. Without these people, we wouldn't have received nearly as much training or development. Our counsellor was also really good a helping us to achieve our goals which, in turn, enabled us to develop.

Very appealing - all the staff here have been very friendly and seem to enjoy working for EY. I particularly like how flexible working really does seem to be flexible. I would particularly want to work again with my team simply because they were all so friendly. The fact that EY is such a big firm and seems to offer good employment perks is also a big attraction.

There was a good social scene - the EY office had a summer party at the beginning of the internship and the tax team also had a social. We also got taken out for lunch on several occasions. All of the people in my team got on well and so the team social was a really nice, relaxed evening. As I was commuting everyday I didn't get to know the other interns as much. This was especially because of the fact that I was in tax with one other intern (who I did get to know well) and the others were in audit. The audit interns definitely met up a lot outside of office hours. However, I think the mixing between audit and tax interns was very limited, particularly because they were out of the office a lot. There wasn't really anything put on throughout the internship to encourage mixing - there was just a start and end meal. It may have been worthwhile to have a mid-way internship meal.

I know less about this because of the fact that I was commuting. The cost of the commute was very expensive - £15 a day for a half an hour train journey. The food in the shops seemed reasonably priced but I am aware that Bristol is a very expensive city to live in and that drinks in bars etc. will be more expensive.

I can't comment on this as I didn't go out! But, according to the other interns who did (and my knowledge of Bristol), it is very good!

Not that many - I saw generic emails sent around about some sport stuff that was going on but I didn't receive any encouragement to get involved of anything outside of work, bar the team social and EY party. This could have been something that was encouraged more. An internship event mid way through would have been good.