Intern Review

I really did enjoy my placement year at Hays. This was mainly down to to the people that I worked with as they were all extremely kind and easy to talk to, which gave the feeling that I was just sitting around with friends whilst getting on with the work.

To start with I didn't feel massively valued because, due to my lack of knowledge and experience, I was not able to add anything to the team and was more of a drain on their time. eventually when I got up to speed I was able to help them when they were stuck and add real value on my own desk.

I was given a lot of support from my manager when I started at Hays, getting me up to speed on the recruitment process as well as my knowledge of the sector. After I passed my probation it ended up falling to another manager to build my knowledge base as well as me taking it upon myself to ask for more learning opportunities.

It would very much vary day to day and week to week. To start with I always had tasks to do but would not have classed myself as busy. Once I was more experienced and left more to my own devices I found that there were periods where I would be working flat out all day, staying late and starting early, but then other periods where the job flow was lower and I would have to make tasks for myself.

I'd say that I was given a lot of responsibility during my placement once I had built up my experience, knowledge and confidence. There were times when I was the only person in work from my team, so I would be covering roles all on myself and in some cases seeing the roles through from start to finish.

I believe the main skills which will benefit me in my degree are work ethic and also time management. The long hours make you realise how much you can get done in a day when you have to, but also when running a desk with multiple roles at once you get to grips with effective time management.

The general atmosphere was mostly lively. At the start of the year there was a greater number of recruiters in the department so this contributed to a loud and exciting sound but later on there were a number of departures which meant there were times when it was extremely quite.

I think it was more organised at the start of the year where there is a set training programme and weekly plan. This is in contrast to later in the year where your progress is not tracked so heavily, you do not have the monthly reviews or the tests or training

Hays definitely invests quite heavily in the interns training programme. You get a fully structured 12 week programme with daily sessions covering all aspects of your job, delivered by experienced people from within your department. They also look to build up your expertise with tests and presentations as well as delivering presentations of their own within their specialism.

I think the future employment opportunities look appealing on the face of it with a structured path to promotions. However, I do not believe that it is as easy to make those jumps to the different levels unless you are very driven and if you are prepared to push your superiors to pencil in the reviews needed for you to progress as they won't always organise them themselves.

There was an extremely good social scene with the other interns as they were all similarly interested in going out after work and having a good time. There were also intern incentives organised for the top billers as well as intern nights out that we ourselves organised, ranging from dinners, to activities and nights out.

I didn't have much to manage in terms of cost of living as my family home is in London so I only had to worry about travel costs which ended up accounting for about 15% of my paycheck. If I also had to pay for accommodation then I would not have had masses of money left over. Also beers were very expensive.

The nightlife was very good in the area I worked. With it being in the centre of London there was a wide variety of pubs, bars and clubs to choose from but then due to the location you were never more than 10-15 minutes from lively locations like Shoreditch and Farringdon.

There were definitely a lot of other opportunities to get involved in outside of the workplace. I myself took part in a 5k fun run towards the start of the year as well as the half tough mudder, both of which I took part in with colleagues from team and department.