Intern Review

The culture at Cushman and Wakefield makes working there great. While there were occasions on the internship where there wasn't too much work for me to do due to the time of year the internship fell on, at no point was I bored. My coworkers also made time to teach me some of the techniques I will need in my masters which has been massively helpful.

The team around me couldn't have been much more welcoming. I was immediately treated the same as everyone else working there, being invited out to celebrate their successes and getting to know everyone personally as well as just professionally. Whenever I was given a piece of work, whoever had asked me to do it would make time to thank me and give feedback on my work.

My line manager while I was at Cushman and Wakefield was great at giving me constructive feedback. We got on great, and he was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to help me learn any topics I was interested in around property. I received some great advice on how to pursue the career I want as well as on specifics about techniques used in their work and advice for my then upcoming masters.

While the summer is the ideal time for an internship of this length, it is not the busiest time of the year for the property industry. For this reason there was not always a massive amount of work to get done. Despite this however, at no point was I ever bored, my team made sure I always had something to do, even going so far as to train me in areas that weren't necessarily of use through my internship but would be valuable going forward.

As I mentioned above, there was not a massive abundance of work for some of my internship. On the other hand, I was invited out to site visits to aid in the valuation process, and given specific tasks to help, for example measuring the dimensions of a property. Seeing how this information was turned into reports, and helping with various tasks along the way was a rewarding process.

I am currently studying in a real estate masters, and so far the techniques and skills I learned while at Cushman and Wakefield have been massively useful. As well as the 'soft skill' training while there, which in itself was fantastic, knowing the actual formulas and how to use them at the start of this masters has been such a help while settling in to a new life for a year.

The general atmosphere was great. Coworkers took a real interest in each other's lives outside of work and seemed to really care for each other. There was a relatively flat corporate structure meaning partners and senior partners were working around me during my time there and would be equally friendly and happy to chat (time allowing) giving some great chances to get their feedback and advice.

The structure of the internship was perfect, the first day being spent meeting other interns and being given introductory lectures as well as briefly meeting our line managers. After that we began work in our teams. There was a project for teams of interns to create a presentation ensuring we were never bored, and we were given presentations on soft skills and around the property industry through our time there as well as having social events organised for the intern cohort.

We were given presentations on presentation skills, information around the property industry and also encouraged to do our own research by being assigned to investigate how changes in an area are impacting the industry. As well as the organised lectures by the firm, my team also took it upon themselves to help with my training, teaching me useful techniques for the work and helping me learn around any topics in which I took an interest.

Interns would often go out to get lunch together or for drinks after work. The only difficulty on this front is that the interns are split between 2 offices, one in the city and one near oxford street. This can make it difficult to make plans for everyone but there was certainly a great social life with all of the interns.

London is always going to be expensive, and when the options are either paying to commute or pay to live in London the pay for the internship quickly becomes needed to fund the costs. Especially going out for drinks became difficult to justify though when out with coworkers they would often insist on paying which was very kind. There are also a few good options for cheap lunches around the offices.