Assurance Summer Intern Review

I did the summer internship in audit and it was a great experience for me. I got to work on a variety of client projects with different teams which I found very interesting. I gained some valuable skills and overall I obtained a very good insight into the industry and what it is like to work in audit at EY.

I felt valued and included within the team. Everyone was very welcoming towards me, which has created a nice working environment for me. My colleagues took an interest in me and listened to me when I wanted to point out something. I also felt that the work I did was appreciated by my colleagues, even though all of them were more senior and more experienced than me.

I felt sufficiently supported by my supervisors on the projects I worked on. When assigning work to me they provided sufficient explanations and made sure I understood what I was doing. The people I worked with were very approachable and I felt comfortable to ask questions when I was not certain about some tasks. I also had my own buddy and counselor and I could reach out to them any time I needed advice or support.

This varied quite a lot. With the exception of just a few days, I was always booked on client projects throughout the 6 weeks. Most often the workload was fairly manageable and the tasks were not too difficult. Some days were quite busy and I was working hard but on a few occasions, I also had some spare capacity when I was completing online trainings provided by EY.

I was given much more responsibility than I expected. The work I was doing was actually important, not just simple administrative tasks. For example, I was responsible for completing several procedures in the audit process by myself, such as walkthroughs and tests of controls. I was not at all micromanaged and was able to manage my own time to complete the work.

I feel than during the internship I significantly improved my Excel skills. I learned for example how to work with Pivot tables or numerous Excel shortcuts that save a lot of time. I also got to interact with clients which helped with my confidence and communication skills. And generally, working with many different people contributed to better teamwork capability. Overall, I believe that the skills I gained and improved are very transferrable and will be useful to me in the rest of my studies and future career as well.

The atmosphere in the team was nice, even when people were working hard they were still relaxed and approachable. Overall, I found the work environment to be pleasant. During the lunch breaks, we almost always went to eat together with the whole team and we also sometimes had coffee breaks together, which I believe contributed to the good atmosphere in the team.

In my opinion, the internship was organised quite well. On the first day, we had an induction event where we learned more about the company and their policies. Then when I got to the office for the first time I was able to access a portal where I saw in advance what work I have been booked for throughout the entire internship, which was useful to know beforehand. Only thing I would add, is that I would have liked if there was maybe some additional training provided for our separate service lines in the beginning as well.

Each of us was assigned a buddy and a counselor that were there to help us throughout the whole internship. I have also had a careers counseling call in to discuss my internship and future career plans. With regards to training, EY provided me with access to a large database of various online trainings I was able to complete in times when I had no assigned work or was not busy.

After having this experience, I can personally say that I would like to work at EY in the future as well. It is a good company with nice people and the work is interesting and varied. I would definitely recommend the summer internship to others so they can experience this first hand.

The social aspect of the internship was very good in my opinion. We had some events organized by the EY office such as Pizza Night, Breakfast with a Partner and socials at the induction and final event. These were really nice and allowed us to get to know each other better. We also sometimes met with other interns for lunch or drinks after work.

I was able to get involved in activities that were quite different from the regular office days. During the induction event, we had a corporate social responsibility day and we were helping a charity called Trees for Cities with park maintenance so I got to spend the whole day outside. I also had a chance to shadow partner for half a day, which was very interesting.