Vacation Student in Technology Enablement for Financial Services Review

The insight was enjoyable throughout. My 'buddy' made the work as stimulating as possible and lots was learnt over the course of the four weeks. Many socials (often with free alcohol!) were also put on in order to get to know the other interns which helped everyone get on very well.

In the four weeks it was difficult to get enough grasp of the project to be able to make a significant impact on it. However, there were lots of bits and pieces of work to do so I never felt useless. The company also made you feel like you are a valued investment for them for the future.

Training was provided for some generic areas of technology. No other guidance was spoon-fed to me but as long as I was proactive, staff were always happy to give up their time to support me. I appreciated this since it is an accurate representation of what it will be like in a graduate role.

Skills developed in the areas of presenting, presentation and report writing will be very helpful in degree studies and beyond because I felt I was weak at this before and gained some interesting insight on developing these. However, I did not learn much technical skill over the four weeks that I did not already know so this will not help too much.

The training was well-structured apart from one blip where a room had not been booked. There was a good balance between training, work and presentations. When it came to company work, there was little structure as I was often picking up bits and pieces but I did not mind this.

All the staff at the company were always laid back and in good spirits which made the atmosphere at work great fun. The socials that were put on further helped to build relations between interns and staff. There was little negativity during the four weeks so everybody looked forward to coming to work every day.

The company invested the time of several of their employees in order to give us training and feedback on our work. They also invested in resources by giving each intern their own laptop for the entirety of the four weeks. I thought there was no excessive investments made at KPMG.

Not only did I get to see the day to day work life of my 'buddy' but he allowed me to roam into any other department I was curious about. This was invaluable and allowed me to really see where I was to fit in KPMG if I were to have a role.

The first day of the internship was a 'culture day'. This was a good few hours of going over what the attitude and values are towards work of a KPMG employee. Employees spoke passionately about their culture making me believe that the employees really believed the values that had been ingrained in them.

The information given on the day was valuable. I would like to be proud of the company I work for and as of that day I decided that it was a company I could be proud of. However, this is not my top priority when going into work as career progression and salary is important for the rest of my life.

I was paid what I viewed as a more than fair salary for the four weeks bearing in mind I was an intern. This easily covered my rail journeys from Reading to London every day with money left over for fun. I would even not have minded being paid slightly less.

I was given plenty of opportunities to meet other employees at the firm as my 'buddy' was very laid back. The calendar booking system made it very easy to see when someone was free and to book an appointment with them. I had one-on-one appointments with four different members of staff in different roles.

The networking and social events were very successful. They allowed us to build relationships with interns who were in our department and in others such as accounting. It also helped us build relationships with staff we were working with outside work. The free alcohol given at these events certainly helped this along!

I do not entirely get what the question is asking here. Not many activities were really mentioned that permanent employees could get involved in outside of work apart from maybe a retreat that was when the employees joined as graduates. I would like to know more about this in future.

I would definitely recommend this insight to a friend if they have any interest in going into a career in technology or finance. I had a fantastic time over the four weeks and I feel that the support given makes the internship accessible to anyone. It also helped me decide on my future career.