Assurance Intern Review

I got the opportunity to work on a range of different clients and get a good grounding in audit work at a Big 4 firm. I was allowed to work flexibly when needed, got to visit 3 different office locations in the UK, and also got the opportunity to shadow a partner during a planning meeting for a large FTSE 100 client.

The colleagues at EY treat you as part of the team during the internship, and don’t make you feel as though you’re ‘just an intern’. They’re happy to offer help when required, and I was also invited out on to several socials that office staff were going on. Even more senior staff knew my name when speaking to me, which surprised me.

The support given by other staff was somewhat varied, but mostly positive - the majority of audit colleagues I worked with were extremely helpful and understood that I was new to audit, however one or two perhaps didn’t entirely understand that I was a complete beginner which made some days slightly stressful. This was however very quickly resolved.

I was assigned to a client for almost all the days that I was on the internship. Some days I had little to do, but I was given online learning tasks to complete instead. For the vast majority of time on the internships I was busy with audit work, however.

I was given as much responsibility as I’d expect for a beginner to audit, I was given tasks and allowed to complete them on my own, and these tasks were then reviewed by colleagues in a more senior position. Overall I was happy with the responsibility that I was given for my work.

I’m an Accountancy with Finance student, and this internship has given me invaluable experience in practice and has given me a much deeper understanding of how what I study applies to life outside of university. I feel as though I’ll be much better equipped for my final year of university after completing this placement.

Working in the office was great - all the interns & the full-time staff who are still in their 3 year training contract sit in the same area together. Everyone’s really friendly there, and it can be a good laugh at times. Working out on client site can be slightly more intense as you’re in a small room with only a couple other people, but this is as expected.

The internship was extremely well structured, as you’d expect from a large recruiter such as EY. You are given a timeline on your first day of how the internship will play out and this is very well stuck-to. I never felt at any point as though I was unsure what was coming up.

EY put a lot of effort into teaching you about the service line that you’re in, and trying to get you as familiar as possible. This perhaps is a contributing factor to why so many interns are invited back as graduates, as they already have a good understanding of the service line that they are in.

It seems as though the majority of interns in previous years were offered graduate jobs. Also, your counsellor and student recruitment keep you updated with the offer process and you never feel in the dark about future employment prospects. You are not offered a job while still on your internship, but instead find out in the weeks following your exit.

The interns were invited to all the leaving lunches & office social events that took place during our time at EY. Sometimes you are unavailable to attend these if you are out on a client site, but for the majority of these events we were made to feel very welcome.

I live in Glasgow, so this was no different to what I am used to.

I live in Glasgow anyway so I am used to this - the nightlife is great.

Most of the opportunities outside of work are to do with lunches/drinks etc.