Summer Intern Review

The Summer Internship with PwC was a good experience that showed me what Audit is like. I enjoyed my time with the company and can say that it was definitely worth my time. However, I would strongly recommend that you do some sort of internship with the company - Summer Internship/Placement Year or at least some sort of Shadowing Programme before you decide to commit to a Graduate Job with any of the Big 4. The work is not for everyone and I have seen some people with mixed emotions about it, so try first. That said, the internship is well structured with various learning opportunities both on the job and outside of it. The HR team is well organised and responsive and the people you work with are friendly, positive and hard working.

I felt very comfortable amongst my colleagues. It was a very friendly work environment and it wasn't too formal either (of course it depends on who you are talking to). A lot of the people you work with are around your age, which gives way to a University-like atmosphere at times. I did not feel under/overestimated and was treated fairly.

The thing everyone emphasizes a lot during the training week and throughout the internship is "Ask Questions". I think this is great as it encourages people to learn actively and really its a subject matter/field you cannot get your head around easily without asking questions. Even if you are from a Accountancy/Finance background there is still a great amount of technical knowledge that you need in order to do your work well. Overall I received all the support I needed from all of my colleagues and always felt comfortable in asking for help/ explanations/ demonstrations and general guidance. Additionally all Summer Interns have a week's worth of training, which also helped in terms of getting acquainted with the company culture, learning some technical things and networking with your peers, as well as some senior members of the company.

I think that at this stage it is common knowledge that working at a Big 4 company can be hard work and depending on which client you are on the hours can be quite long (especially during busy season January to March). During my internship I had to work long hours where necessary and on occasion there was the odd 10-11 hour working day. The culture is very overtime heavy and you do not necessarily receive any direct benefit from working long hours - well you do your job right, which is not a small in itself and you receive recognition from you managers. I assume it ties into your bonus in a way but I am not familiar enough with PwC's bonus structure to comment on that. In any case, it all depends on your tolerance and readiness to work hard. If you can't handle the long hours I would suggest looking elsewhere. I would say though, that I do believe it pays off in the long term, so if you are ambitious and committed you can power through!

I was given a reasonable amount of responsibility. I got to interact with the client and do a variety of tasks. Of course, if you are a Summer Intern, there is no way to learn and master the trade in a couple of weeks - therefore expect to be given some of the simpler tasks in order to get your feet wet.

I think I learned a great deal for a very short length of time during the internship. I personally got to further develop my networking, communication, data analysis, time management and organisation skills. The internship also gives opportunities to present and pitch ideas and has instructional videos on various topics. I also learned more about audit as a profession and PwC as a company, which contributed towards my commercial awareness. In the end it is entirely up to you when it comes to learning and getting involved with things - my advice is to try and say Yes to as many things as you can in order to get the most out of it.

I did not get to work in the actual office much, because I was at a client site most of the time. From my limited time there, the atmosphere at the office felt very friendly and welcoming. The office facilities were also of a good quality. At the client site the team atmosphere was always very nice, there was some friendly banter from time to time and we had short 10-minute competitions most days in order to get our blood flowing and improve team morale.

As I mentioned before the internship was really well organised. There is a good reason why PwC is rated as one of the top Graduate recruiters in the country. They have invested a lot of effort and money into creating well-structured and well-organised Internship programmes. Everything was communicated to us on time and in full. My only criticism is that there is a reasonable amount compliance and bureaucracy before you start and you are contacted from various teams from the company with several requests. My suggestion is (at least for the Summer Interns) to centralise the process a little bit and send a pack of all needed information once. Personally, I had a busy schedule before the internship started and suddenly getting another request out of the blue was not great. However, this did not greatly detract from my experience.

One week of off-site training, several online presentations on various aspects of the business and skills development, a "co-opetition" between the interns and various networking opportunities. In short, I believe the company invests a lot of money into its interns to ensure that they get as much out of the programme as possible.

The social scene was good as well. A lot of the people working at the company are quite young so there are often informal get-togethers and various organised social events. My intern group was also quite active and sociable, so we managed to organise ourselves and go out together a few times.

I was based in the Leeds office. The city is very affordable to live in and at the same time there is a good variety of things to do as it has pretty much everything you can think of. It is also in Yorkshire so you can go around the area and visit various beautiful places if you haven't had the chance before.

There is everything from pubs and bars to cinemas and cheap and fancy restaurants alike. Leeds is a big University city so the club scene is quite big as well (although not as big during Summer Break). I personally have never felt any lack of opportunity or access to entertainment and would recommend the city to anyone.

There were various Social Events and a Networking Event. Without going into too much detail, there was also a challenge posted to all the interns where we had to work together to generate various ideas on a chosen topic and we pitched them towards the end of the internship.