Summer Assurance Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement with PwC. They make a real effort in the first week to integrate all the interns by taking you away for 3 days to a manor, where you also get the chance to speak with partners. In terms of the work I was doing, I was given lots of responsibility throughout my internship and was allowed to sit in on high profile meeting on several occasions.

Whilst I was still seen as an intern throughout my whole time, my colleagues made a real effort to bond with me and invited me out to work socials on several occasions. Everyone was really friendly which I think is something that can be seen across PwC as a whole in the UK.

PwC ensure that you are constantly given support and guidance on your internship by giving you a 'buddy' and also a people manager for your 6 weeks. Whilst I never actually used my buddy, my people manager was absolutely fantastic at helping me with anything I wanted to pursue. For example, I wanted to work on a sustainability project whilst I was on my internship and he helped arrange that for me, as well as my transfer to the London office for my graduate role.

As I was on quite a large engagement with a tight deadline, I was very busy for most of my 6 week internship and was never without work to be done. That being said, I know that my situation wasn't reflective of the amount of work most interns get.

I was given significant amounts of responsibility during my internship, something which I was surprised about. For example, I was given the task of independently auditing several head office companies for a FTSE350 client, and was given jobs that were pivotal for the engagements completion. This I feel is one of the things that sets PwC apart from other internships as they put a lot of trust in you from the beginning and make you feel valued, despite it being a multinational corporation.

As I plan to go into a career in auditing, the work I did was incredibly useful as it has taught me about the different stages of auditing and how the process works once you are on the client site. The internship also increased my business acumen as I learnt about a variety of different industries and make connections with relatively high profile people within the company and with the client also.

Due to the nature of the work, I was almost always on client sites and out of the office. However when I was in the office, the atmosphere was also very relaxed and chilled yet professional at the same time. For example, they have dress down august and dress down Fridays and the layout of the office meant that is was very sociable.

The organisation of the internship is why PwC have retained the top stop for being the number one recruiter for the last 13 years. From the very beginning, the whole process worked very well and everyone from the staff and the interns knew what their schedule was all the time. As PwC have been running the internship for many years now, they have perfected its organisation. Not a bad thing to say on this.

As said previously, the firm did invest a considerable amount in you from the start when they put all the interns up in a manor in London to receive three days of training. Whilst this may not seem like a lot, for a 6 week internship, the first week was just spend on training you on both the company and the role that you would be doing over the next 5 weeks. Furthermore if you got the job at the end of the internship, you were guaranteed to gain a professional qualification.

The future job prospects at PwC are unparalleled to any other firm. Not only does the internship almost guarantee you a graduate job, but it offers the opportunity to do a secondment after you have completed your graduate contract and also the opportunity to move around within departments within the firm as well.

Unfortunately, I was the only intern at my office at the time and therefore there wasnt much a social scene between interns at my office. However I remained in contact with a number of the interns in the Manchester office and met up with them on several occasions to see how their internship was going etc.

Liverpool was an incredibly cheap city compared to my home town of Birmingham and this meant that I was able to socialise with the employees at PwC and eat out a lot whilst I was on my internship. Eating out was almost crucial as the length of my hours meant that on many occasions there wasn't enough time to cook.

The nightlife in Liverpool was absolutely amazing and due to the small size of the city, they were right on my doorstep all the time, making it very easy to get home after a night out. Furthermore, there was a good diverse range of clubs to suit anyones preferences and big names regularly visited the city.

There were lots of opportunities to get involved with activities outside of work. For example, there are regular sporting classes held across the city 7 days a week, and also my colleagues have a social club in which they hold several events outside of work per month. This meant that my time was always filled up during the internship.