Summer Intern Finance at Network Rail Review

The internship was enjoyable and gave a good insight into what working in finance is like. I had two 5 week placements in two different finance teams. Also site visits were organised so we could see more of what the business does and we had talks with other finance areas to improve our business understanding.

All of the colleagues I worked with were very friendly and were keen to give me work to do to help them. They valued and appreciated the work that I did for them, so I felt like the work that I was doing was helpful and beneficial to the company.

We were given a good amount of support through weekly catch up sessions to discuss any issues or questions and to organise and arrange various site visits. When we were working in our placement teams, the support varied between teams – some gave a lot of support and structure to the work we were doing.

Most of the time I was given one task at a time which meant I wasn’t overloaded with jobs. There were rarely times when I had no work to do. Sometimes I was given various tasks to complete by different colleagues at once and this helped me to learn how to manage my time well.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility in my placement in the sense that a lot of the work I was assigned was actually useful and important for the business. However, there was always someone to ask questions or to help me so that I didn’t feel pressured by the responsibility.

During the placement I worked a lot on Excel and learnt a lot of new skills using it, especially through the sessions that were organised to teach us Excel. I also improved teamwork and presentation skills through doing a group project and presentation with other interns. These will be useful in my degree.

The atmosphere in the office was quite friendly and relaxed. There was a good balance between work and getting to talk with colleagues. You can choose when you start and when you take your lunch break. The office was open plan so it was easy to talk to people in different teams.

The internship was overall very well organised – we went on a lot of site visits and there were talks arranged with different finance teams. The only things that weren’t so well organised were the shadowing days with the finance leadership team which kept being rescheduled. Also we didn’t get told what our group project was until nearly half way through the internship.

There wasn’t really any specific training on this placement. Since it was only ten weeks, we learnt most things on the job, and everyone was keen to help us learn new skills needed for the job. However there were Excel training sessions that were helpful for our work and personal development.

Job prospects are very good at Network Rail. During the placement we were given the opportunity to be interviewed for the graduate scheme at Network Rail, which gave us useful interview practice as well as the chance to have a graduate job offer before starting our final year at university.