Intern Review

I mostly really enjoyed my internship. The team were very friendly and welcoming and the experience was a lot more relaxed than I had thought it would be. At times it was a little hard to find work to do as a lot of people were on holiday and so could not delegate tasks to me. However, the work I was set was interesting.

The team were very friendly from the beginning and tried to include me when they could, either by explaining things to me, setting me work, inviting me to various socials and team meetings and talking to me about their experiences as well. They were supportive and were happy to answer any questions I had.

The buddy system was very useful as it made it a lot easier to settle in as I had someone to go to if I had any questions. I had a few meeting throughout my internship with my career coach, who showed my things such as how to set goals and request feedback which was useful and explained to me how the process worked.

The amount of work I received varied day by day. Some weeks a had a few bits to do each day, especially towards the end of my internship. However there were other days where I had very little to do, especially when the office was very quite when people were on holiday.

As I was new to tax and knew very little about it when I started my internship, I was not given much responsibility. However, the team were very good at trying to include me and explain things to me that I didn't understand or know about and gradually set me more involved tasks throughout.

I think that I learnt a lot about business and tax during my internship which will definitely be useful in the future. It also gave me an insight into working in an office and having to form relationships with different people which I think will be useful when I leave University.

The general atmosphere in the office was much more relaxed and friendly than I had anticipated. However, at times it was quite quiet as not many people were in. Most people were very approachable in the office. There was sometimes breakfast brought round and given to everyone in the team and when the tap was broken, bottles water was given to everyone. This made it overall a more enjoyable experience.

The internship was well organised in the weeks leading up to it and throughout the recruitment process. However, I only received one email regarding the location of the induction, and this was only specified once on an attachment not long before the induction start date. A lot of people I spoke to at the induction all said this too, and said that it wasn't made clear to them well enough in advance where the induction was. The actual internship was well organised; the buddy system especially helped.

The three day induction at the start of my internship provided a lot of information about PwC and tax in the form of multiple lectures throughout the course. However, it would have been even more useful if these lectures were more focused towards the specific team in which our internship was taking place, e.g. mine was corporate tax.

The future employment prospects are very appealing. Things that appeal to me include the salary, the ability to travel, the ability to potentially move abroad and the ability to take professional exams. I don't know if I have been offered a job yet however, as I don't find this out till the very last day of my internship.

There was a fairly good social scene within the team. There was an away day where we travelled to leeds and participated in various team building activities with the Leeds and Manchester offices. We also went to York races one day and went out for drinks after the away day. I would have liked there to be more of a chance to meet up with the interns in other offices and also in the same office but different department.

I am a student at Newcastle University and my internship was in Newcastle, about 10 minutes on the metro. It cost me £3:10 a day for a return ticket to work which I think was reasonable. Socialising was also quite cheap, only having to pay for a few drinks which weren't too expensive. The York Races ticket was only £15 as well.

The nightlife in Newcastle is good. The offices is in the city centre so there are plenty of bars nearby. Nowhere was too busy and the drinks were cheap. There were plenty of places to chose from as well.

There were a few opportunities such as the York races, a social BBQ and the Away day. There wasn't anything regular (as in one evening a week type thing) and I would have liked there to be more opportunity to meet with with other interns at other offices to compare experiences.