Data Assurance- Summer Intern Review

The atmosphere in the office was very relaxed and friendly and the people really make the firm. As a group the interns met up frequently, both at lunchtimes and after work and it was great to get to meet this group of people. I didn't find the work I was doing very challenging and so I didn't enjoy it so much, however it was given plenty of opportunities during the placement to shadow senior staff and meet with people from other lines of service within the firm and this was very interesting.

Varied but overall they were very grateful for any work I completed for their job and keen to help me gain an understanding of the overall purpose/context of the job. Generally I wasn't given any tasks that were truly 'dull' and repetitive as they seemed keen to give me a flavour of the work variety available.

My people manager was extremely helpful, touching base informally throughout the internship and always approachable when I had queries. I expressed an interest to experience the Lonodn offices at the start of my internship and he put a lot of effort into coordinating that for me with a range of people to meet and chat to. Supervisors were also very helpful. I would like to mention here that at the start I had no jobs on my retain (where work is given) and I had to chase relevant people down a bit to sort good jobs out. I think this was an anomoly though as the relevant guy was on holiday at the start of my internship.

Busy. Not 7-10pm busy but I got through each day (approx 8.30am-6pm) without many workless breaks. I think that with the majority of interns it was more varied though, especially Core Assurance who had periods of long, intense days at client sites and then effectively no work for several days in the office.

A fair amount. At the start I wasn't pressured to make client contact during interviews etc. and simply take notes but as my confidence grew client contact increased. By the end I partook in a Laboratory audit for several days during which I was regularly left alone with the client to go through samples and carry out tests which I really enjoyed. My work was generally always checked afterwards by another member of the team before going straight to final piece.

I began by helping with a governance audit, which required a lot of reading, pulling out key observations and points as well as taking notes during meetings/calls and summarising those into minutes at the end. These soft skills had seldom been required during my more numerically based Physics degree so I feel they developed significantly. I also developed my data manipulation skills whilst doing some test writing work from an ERP system's data, especially using Excel to carry out tasks such as Vlookups. Generally people skills developed in a business setting too! Would have liked to perhaps improve IT skills further having done an IT Risk Assurance internship.

Generally everyone was very friendly, especially when already on a job with them. Quite often I had to initiate an introduction with someone sat near me as people are in/out of the office so much there'd usually be a new face every day (in the first week at least). This was a bit nerve wrecking and I think it would have been nicer if interns were always introduced to new faces. After introductions people I'd met were always really friendly and chatty. Obviously though we were there to work so it wasn't always chatting!

I would say everything was really well organised aside from my jobs on Retain at the start. I was really eager to know what I'd be doing and had nothing there which was slightly frustrating as I wanted to prepare. However once I tracked down the relevant guy he listened to what I wanted and did his best to give me the variety I liked. The induction was really good with all interns on the intake and in the Leeds office too. I thought collecting feedback wsa good too.

We received extensive inductions, 1 whole week out of 6. Also there were E-Learning modules we had to carry out and we had to write Objectives at the start of the internship and then attain Feedback for each job. This was all discussed in a Feedback session at the end. Overall, a lot of investment.

Very appealing. If I decide this is the career move for me (I.e. professional services) then this would be a very easy choice. I believe about 95% of interns receive a grad offer for the internship they did.

Definitely. Everyone at PwC is an extrovert resulting in a group of friendly, fun, confident people. Luckily I had approx. 10 interns at my office who were always up for socials and I lived with 3 of them. Aside form interns, the younger people in their first years of Grad Schemes invited us to several events and when on jobs the people I was working with suggested meals/drinks together etc.

Leeds is cheaper than other cities like London and Manchester. so I'd say pretty good. Not the cheapest city in the North but it's potentially my favourite.

There is a lot of choice of clubs, pubs, and bars for you to go to and they're all quite close to each other so if you want to move from one bar to another you can do very easily. Broad Street is very busy, it can be quite expensive on a Saturday night and there tends to be a lot of chavs about.

I got involved with the PwC Netball team and played for them several times and also went to a Networking event put on by PwC. Apparently there's also an annual sports day but that's about it. Oh, you can do various charity endeavours too.