Intern Review

Overall, I enjoyed my time at CR-UK. My internship wasn't particularly well suited to what I want to do in my career, so I didn't enjoy the

I led a collaborative project between a number of different teams, and mostly felt like my contribution to this was valued. However, at times I felt as though they engaged more with my manager than with me directly - sometimes it felt like I was viewed as 'the intern' rather than a colleague.

I was given a great deal of support during my internship by my manager, the HR team, and others (including a mentor in another department). I met with my manager weekly to discuss my project, and they always took the time to answer any questions I had and to show me how things worked.

My project took a while to kick off, so I was less busy in the first month of my internship than towards the end. I also found that I either had a lot or very little to do, as I was often waiting for responses from other people before I could continue with my work.

I was given a lot of responsibility and felt like my contribution was valued. My project was very important within my department, so I felt like the work I was doing was appreciated. However, at times I felt like I could have been given more independence and trusted more to make my own decisions (rather than checking in with my manager over small decisions) - but this improved as time went on.

The main skills I developed were project management and leadership, which will be really helpful in my future career. I also built on my ability to manage a team and communicate with people at different levels of seniority, which I'm sure will be useful in my next job. It was easy to find out more about different departments which has helped me to decide what I want to do next.

There was a lot of variation between teams. Some teams were very sociable and friendly and others were more quiet. My floor was quite casual, and often quite loud. This made it a comfortable environment to be in, but sometimes it was difficult to concentrate and get work done.

The internship placement was very well organized and there were regular development days over the 3 months. The timing of these training sessions wasn't always right, but there was a great deal of support for the interns on the whole. There were a lot of people to turn to for support aside from my manager (e.g. HR team).

There were regular development days for the interns but these weren't always useful. There are organisation-wide learning opportunities (e.g. workshops, talks etc) but these aren't tailored to interns and aren't very well publicized. I tried to sign up to a couple of workshops, but they weren't run very frequently and so there were no opportunities during my 3 months working here.

There's a really high turnover rate so I'm confident that if I wanted to find a job here in the future, there would be a lot of opportunities to apply for. A lot of the interns have either extended their contracts or been employed full term, or fixed term. There's an internal jobs board so there's lots of opportunities, and the HR team sends them around to the interns. I've also been told that a lot of interns come back to work at CRUK later.

There was a good social scene with the other interns and we ate lunch together most days, and went for drinks after work a couple of times. There are a few social events organized by the placements team. I didn't socialize with my team outside of work, although I know some other teams were more sociable. It would have been nice to do more social things with other colleagues.

As the area is really central, it was expensive to travel to work. It's also an expensive area to buy food/drinks etc. in, but there is a subsidized canteen and a lot of the local businesses do discounts for CRUK employees.

There are a lot of pubs and bars around the office and it's in central London so there's lots to do nearby.

There were some opportunities to join sports teams (which felt a bit pointless on such a short contract) and to volunteer at fundraising events