Tax Trainee Review

Thoroughly. Lots of different and interesting work to do. There were times where I was confined to filing, but in every instance people explained to me the importance of the job I was doing (which made me feel much more important than I probably really was!). Other than that, the people were nice and approachable, and prepared to give me work, provided they had any for me.

I really did feel valued by everyone. At the end of the month, the office has a 'thank you box', where you leave 'thank you notes' to people who have been nice to you or helped you with something over the month, and the person whose name is drawn out wins a prize. I and the other intern were thanked for a number of things by a number of staff, which made us feel really valued and our efforts appreciated.

All staff of all ranks were prepared to sit down and help me with literally anything. I was astonished by everyone's readiness to help me, and it contributed greatly to my feeling valued within the workplace. Not much else to say, I suppose - cracking job from the staff.

It took a while to get going, if I'm honest. I think that was because it took about 2 weeks for the staff in the office to sort of realise I was there, and therefore to think of passing on work to me. After that, I started to receive lots more work, and the more I was doing, the more they trusted me with more work in turn. By the end, I was very busy, but in a good way! There were a few nights where I was also working late (leaving the office at about 7:30-8:30), but the work was engaging and enjoyable, and I really didn't mind!

I was never solely responsible for a piece of work, but I think that was to be expected. I was given sizeable roles within larger projects (such as preparing and gathering information for presentations), though, and the work was always checked by a superior, so I did feel that I was able to make contributions, but with the safety net of someone proofreading me (which was reassuring, especially when it was the first time I had done many of these kinds of tasks).

I was surprised by how much the internship helped with my multi-tasking. I was doing numerous tasks, often all at once, and I really improved at juggling the tasks and alternating between them. The internship also really helped me perfect my note-taking skills, by bringing notebook to all meetings, which meant I always had everything with me at all times. Although not an idea created by BDO, they encouraged this method of note-taking.

Really good. There wasn't a fixed seating plan, which had its pros and cons. Pros were that you were rotated around the office, so you got the chance to meet nearly every member of staff, simply by sitting next to all of them. The main con of this was that you never really settled to one particular seat, which made it a bit more difficult to feel established (only at first, though). As I've said above, the 'thank you box' was another really nice gesture.

We had four days in Birmingham for technical training at the start of the placement, which was pretty well organised. Lots of time to meet other people, and was generally a good introduction to the internship. The office-based part of the internship was good, except that my counselling manager wasn't really there for the first three weeks because he was abroad on work, and I would have appreciated a designated temporary replacement manager, just to help me at least find work, as much of these first three weeks I didn't have a lot of it. To be honest, though, I really don't know how important my counselling manager was in organising work and tasks for me to do, though, because although the work increased and became more interesting as soon as he returned, that was also just about at the time that I had started to integrate with the office. Still, would have been nice to know someone senior was there looking out for me in the first few weeks. The last couple of days were in London on an 'HR Presentation thing' (not the technical term, you understand). This was much less well organised, and much of the time was spent giving us 'busy work' (such as being sent out into London for 5 hours - in the rain - with instructions to raise money for charity, but no further information). After the good sell from the rest of the internship, this really made the whole thing end on a downer.

They invested an awful lot of time in us, including four days of technical training in tax and accounting, which was very valuable (and I can imagine very costly).

Very. The broad attitude BDO espouses is 'the more you put in, the more you get out of us', and I think that's probably true. They have a lot of things in place to allow people to specialise by sector, country, or stream, as well as the amount and kind of work you can do (although obviously I didn't get to do much of that on the actual internship).

We had the departmental summer party while I was there. It was a boat party, and they had clearly put a lot of effort into organising it. It was also a great opportunity to meet and socialise with members of the department I hadn't got an opportunity to meet during normal work. The only thing that puzzled me was that we never went out together after work. We got on in the office, but would never down tools and decide to go out of the pub on a Friday or something. It's hardly the be-all and end-all of a work placement, but it was odd that they didn't have that aspect of social integration.

It's London - it was hardly cheap.

Didn't go out during my time there, but I get the impression there is a pretty good socialising scene.

Don't really understand the question. We didn't pile out of work and go paintballing on a regular basis, if that's what you mean.