Summer Scheme Intern Review

The Summer Scheme offers a great insight into the company and a range of departments not just the one you are put in.

The team was really friendly and definitely appreciated the work I did for them. However as an intern you do get given the most tedious jobs.

The grad on my team gave me a lot of guidance and support. She was always happy to help out and go through things. In general most people in the firm are happy to help.

The skills learnt are extremely valuable, especially for a student not currently studying Real Estate. Across the 4 weeks I learnt a range of skills as well as how to use programs and databases that are commonly used in the industry. The skills will definitely help me out when I start my MSc Real Estate and will most likely make going into a grad position much easier.

Very well structured. With weekly departmental overviews the scheme allows you to gain an insight into other departments and real estate in general. Additionally there were many social activities and opportunities to talk to the other students.

I was in a very good department where the atmosphere was always positive. Atmosphere was much better when actually sitting with the team rather than being in a hot seat.

Personal training mainly came from the tasks set during the scheme. Grads and members of the team helped out to explain particulars within the industry which was certainly helpful for training. The departmental overviews were also helpful but otherwise there was not a huge amount of investment in training and development. It is more what you put in, you get out.

The Summer Insight Scheme definitely helped me understand what it would be like to work at Savills full time. Spending a month working there allows you to quickly get a feel for the company and what it would be like on a day to day basis. Additionally meeting other people ion different departments allowed me to really understand the culture of Savills and how this is unique and makes the entire Savills experience.

Savills are proud of their company culture and employees talk about it all the time. The month at Savills allowed me to really understand the culture and see it in practice. Savills certainly has a 'family' culture and members from all across the business believe in this, and in my experience I certainly saw this and how it benefited the employees as well as making it an attractive place to work.

Being given important tasks that were directly related to the teams active projects was very useful and allowed me to properly understand what I would be doing as a full time employee at Savills. Additionally observing others in my team and attending site visits with the team allowed me to gain greater idea of what a graduate would actually be doing in their job. Some content was certainly long and dull but this is to be expected as an intern.

I got paid a fairly decent salary. However I had to commute in from outside of London, so after deducting travel and expenses it wasn't a huge amount. Savills reimbursed me for all expenses however it is a slightly confusing process that means that someone else in the team had to deal with the receipts and recording it officially. It meant it was sometimes awkward to ask to be remimbursed as you would have to ask a grad to give you cash and then they would be reimbursed by the company.

Yes the opportunities for networking were excellent, probably the best in the industry I would imagine. There were about 25 other interns which we were encouraged to network with from day 1 which helped create many important relationships. In addition we had a lunch with some of the directors which gave us a chance to network with them and talk to them about their job. Perhaps a suggestion would be to have networking events with interns from other companies?

The networking events were very well organised. We were told when they were in advance and although were daunting at first, became an extremely useful tool for developing communication skills as well as meeting other people. We had a drinks social, rounder's event and a casual lunch with some fee earners. There were also other opportunities on top of this which we could chose to go to if we wanted to.

Yes the real estate industry is very social in general. This scheme is great as there are so many other interns that you can develop relationships with and take these outside of work. We had talks about graduate opportunities which illustrated the diversity of opportunities such as sport etc that you can get involved in as a graduate. It was clear that at Savills employees weren't just co workers but more often than not.

It seems like this is one of the top real estate summer internships. It offers so much additional content and is really informative. The four weeks certainly allowed me to gain an excellent insight into Savills and the real estate sector in general. It is an enjoyable experience that I feel has helped me develop hugely as a person and allowed me to feel more comfortable about pursuing property as a career path.