Frontline Recruitment Intern Review

Great experience within the organisation and a real insight into the fields of social work and graduate recruitment. Fast paced internship, where you are expected to learn on the job, but are provided with all the necessary assistance throughout. No day is the same; you can be analyzing data and drafting a report with findings one, whilst planning activities for potential graduate brand managers around London the next. An valuable experience for anyone interested in joining the Frontline graduate scheme!

Frontline is a relatively small start up company with a very strong company ethos, therefore the summer interns immediately feel valued and welcome. It is noticeable how interns are not made to feel like spare parts during the scheme, but are brought into the center of the office and work alongside the rest of the teams. You work alongside the different departments throughout the internship and build a good working relationship with them over the three weeks. There is clearly a strong team spirit within the workforce and this naturally rubs off with the interns.

You receive multiple forms of guidance during your internship and this helps you immediately settle in and after this encourages you to apply yourself further and make the most of the internship. At first, your department welcome and introduce you; setting you necessary work and explaining how the company operates. After this, you receive assistance from people all across the company, who are more than happy to set you projects and meet regularly to discuss progress. On a more general note, the staff are happy to talk about professional development and offer more general advice for career progression.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the internship was the sheer variety of work set and projects undertaken over the three weeks. In my humanities degree there is minimal data analysis, but from the start I was responsible with dealing with and analyzing large amounts of data. Finding trends and correlations and then showing them through graphs and charts on different computer programs was a welcome change from my usual essay based style of work. I particularity enjoyed analyzing statistics and helping to draw together important reports that the company would be using in the future. This application and analysis of data, along with developing IT skills has been invaluable and will equip me for potential employment in the future.

The insight is naturally well structured, because you are placed within a specific team within the organisation. Working within the recruitment and brand management team immediately felt secure and structured and you were assigned work and offered necessary support by members of your team. At the start of the project you are given you assignments for the 3 weeks and it is left up to you to plan you how will go about meeting these briefs. The team and organisation as a whole is very small and you soon develop close professional relationships with everyone in different departments. This helps to structure your internship as other teams ask you to help them with projects and you soon link up your own work with others.

It is clear that Frontline is a company with a clear set of values and a strong team ethos. The office culture is very hardworking, but also very welcoming and geared towards building a strong team spirit. You always feel supported and are never let alone without anything to do; the team go out of their way to give you assistance throughout. There are regular activities and events that bring the whole organisation together including bake offs and pot lunches, so within long you feel part of the organisation.

You are offered regular and weekly personal training by staff members from different departments across the organisation. The support you receive is not confined to the immediate team you are working with, in fact you soon find yourself working with projects and briefs in a variety of teams. This variety in professional development offered is the main appeal, because it can help offer different perspectives and knowledge about Frontline, but graduate employment in general. I was amazed at how eager everyone is to offer advice and insight into the world of work, the whole team very much aware of how to support students preparing to leave university.

During the placement you never feel separate from the team and 'just an intern' as may be the impression in other organisations. It becomes quickly apparent that the projects you are working on are of real use to the company and will be utilized in the future to help grow the scheme. This creates a natural standard of professionalism to everything that you do and complete. There is a degree of freedom afforded to interns where they are given their projects and briefs in advance and are then responsible to seek new challenges once these are complete. This independence makes the internship develop your own self motivation and drive to succeed in a workplace. You realize that a full time role is not spoon fed and you develop initiative quickly.

The main aim of Frontline is to help transform the lives of the most vulnerable children, through the recruitment and training of high quality social workers. This is made apparent to all new interns and it is soon clear to be the purpose of everything the company does. It helps that every member of staff is passionate about the company culture and vision at it's heart. I applied to the internship because of this unique company culture and an understanding of it only grows stronger during your time at Frontline.

Work experience of any kind is invaluable, preparing yourself for professional full time employment. The Frontline internship is special however, because of the sheer variety of work you will be carrying out. No day feels the same and you will develop a broad skills set over three weeks. It has made me passionate about Frontline as a company and it's mission in society; thus encouraging me to look into applying to the graduate scheme in the future.

You work within a single department initially, but it soon becomes apparent that the work you will be doing spans the company. This helps you network and build strong professional relationships with a diverse section of the workforce. Receiving support and advice from staff who work both in recruitment, operations and external relations is the most valuable part of the project because it helps offer career guidance from a wide range of specialists.

Frontline has a very strong team ethic and the whole company regularly has social events that introduce you to the everyone and make you feel like a valued member of the organisation. Lunches around London with the different departments in the office are arrange for you and this is a brilliant way to meet your whole workplace over the three weeks. There are whole Frontline events that bring everyone together such as bake off's, pot lunches where everyone brings in a dish for lunch and weekly Friday drinks.

You always feel supported by employees and relaxed to seek their advice or just have a conversation; therefore you frequently discussed life outside of work. Everyone was keen to discuss how they managed to equip themselves to enhance their professional development and offer advice on how to do this to the iterns.

I would definitely recommend this insight to a friend interested in social work or in seeking valuable experience of full time work in the charity sector in general. As long as the friend was highly motivated, and willing to learn and succeed in a fast paced and dynamic organisation, then I would lead them in the direction of Frontline.