Business Analyst Intern Review

My internship at Expedia was a very rewarding experience at a professional and personal level. Whilst my learning path and deliverables were slightly misaligned at times, they were individually very carefully planned and facilitated to me as an intern, accounting for both my interests and personality. Having participated in internships in the past, this was my most enjoyable experience in the workplace despite being one of the shortest.

Very much so - I was involved in high visibility projects from the first day by my very approachable team, whose members were welcoming and happy to involve me in their conversations. At a personal level I felt at home at Expedia very soon, both with coworkers from the London office as well as with those who worked with us remotely. All interns that get to work with them will be incredibly lucky!

I was fortunate to be part of a relatively small team, which allowed my manager to pay special attention to my work and professional development. Being on the same professional path as him also allowed him to share with me methods and techniques that directly impacted my productivity at work. 1:1s and team meetings were also recurrent both in a scheduled and spontaneous way whenever further support was needed.

Whilst I balanced a personal academic project with my everyday workload, I can say that I did not work beyond what is desirable. While some days were busier than others, the many ongoing projects handled by my team allowed me to stay very occupied for practically all of my internship days. And for those times when I was not, the breadth of subjects and projects going on at Expedia to read about kept me busy!

The level of responsibility I was given was exactly what I expected - I needed to check most submissions internally by my managers rather than taking full responsibility over my work, but this was something I expected and even preferred as an intern. At times I would have enjoyed to have a little bit more of creative freedom but at the same time I appreciate that my suggestions would have definitely been listened to and perhaps incorporated if I had stayed a longer time with the team.

Whilst I shared my study plan with other interns and consequently it was not perfectly aligned to fields I wanted to enhance, my learning on the job allowed me to develop the skills that I needed before joining the workplace as a Masters graduate. The amount of individual learning that Expedia's resources allow as well as the readiness of others to teach me and involve me in parts of the business that I considered interesting made it impossible not to learn new things everyday. I was also fortunate that the more technical members of my team found the time to teach me new things as well, allowing me to experience my field (data analytics) from a practical viewpoint.

Like no other that I had experienced before, really embodying the work hard, play hard spirit that Expedia sells. People were welcoming, fun and approachable, but there was also a constant underlying energy to push towards our business objectives together. I spent less than 3 months with them and still hope to visit and stay in touch with several of my team members!

Expedia has a broad experience in setting up internships and both the recruitment team and my particular team set up processes in a logical and timely way, from my interviews up until my last day. I really have no complaints about how the whole experience was rolled out.

While I was not given total freedom on what trainings to take (we were a big group of interns doing vastly different things!), we were generally very well looked after by our program organisers, who were also very open to receive feedback about how the structure of the program could be improved. Overall I found the investment was high considering that there were quite a few interns whose interests they also had to attend to.

Very appealing for the city of London both financially and in terms of progression. Their career plan perfectly aligned with what I look for if I had remained in the city!

The social scene was good in general and supported by the program team. The age gap between undergraduates and master students made it difficult to remain cohesive but overall the atmosphere was positive.

London is expensive, and access from more affordable areas can be a bit tricky for the office that I worked from. In terms of entertainment, Expedia actively worked with local businesses to reduce the costs which was particularly useful for us students!

It is not something that I got really involved in during my placement but I expect generally expensive given the area but still widely available (near Shoreditch, Hoxton areas).

I was unable to navigate the opportunities available in an easy way but they definitely existed if I sought them actively. Stronger Intranet use could facilitate future interns' access to these opportunities.