Analytics Intern Review

Overall I thought it was an enjoyable experience, especially considering the current corona virus situation.

The first week and a half of the internship was comprised of training sessions, although I felt that not all of the sessions ended up being relevant to what I was doing. All the interns were also assigned a buddy by their manager although there was a range in our buddies experience. A fellow intern was assigned a fairly senior team member who gave her weekly training sessions whereas mine was on the 2nd year of her graduate scheme role. However, this meant my buddy was able to relate more to the experience of being new and junior to the company.

The business skills I learnt (such as business acumen, experience of how to schedule and lead meetings, knowledge of the travel industry and working within search engine optimisation), while not particularly relevant to my degree, are therefore the kind of skills other candidates won't have when applying for graduate roles. I also learnt some SQL which I am not planning to use in my degree but might be relevant for someone doing a different course or taking different options.

I personally felt that it was obvious this was the first time they'd tried to run a virtual training session, which was understandable since they'd had to put this together fairly last minute. Some of the issues arose due to the difference in required knowledge and equipment provided for software engineering interns versus analytics interns like myself. We were all provided with laptops, but almost everyone got Macbooks whereas I received a Windows thinkpad which meant some of the set-up instructions didn't apply to me.

One of the 10 guiding principles of Expedia is to assume that everyone is acting in the best interests of the company, which I found promoted a friendly and trusting environment. Although I was unfortunately unable to meet any of my team in person, I found everyone to be very responsive over Slack messages. From the meetings (and 'elevenses' team calls) I attended, there seemed to be a lot of affinity between the full-time employees, for example one team had their own Top Trumps deck for their favourite holiday destinations.

We received weekly 'Leadership sessions' with senior leaders within the company, even including the CEO [This section of the comment has been removed by a member of the RateMyPlacement Team because it did not meet our site terms and conditions]. After a short talk we'd be allowed to ask questions, although these had to be submitted before hand and selected by the member of the early careers team who was chairing the meeting. We were also given a weekly 'Intern Learning Series' which covered a range of topics from business acumen, to inclusive communication/representation and also mental wellness.

All the interns completed a whole project from start to finish during the 10 weeks of the internship, ending with an 'Intern Showcase presentation'. Although this showcase was intern-specific, myself and several other interns also separately presented our projects to our respective stakeholders much like a full time employee would. I was also able to sit in on various team meetings to see what the full time employees were working on, which provided further insight.

From what I could tell, Expedia puts a big emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion, encouraging us to include this in one of our quarterly goals. Following the Black Lives Matter movement there was a company-wide push on better racial representation, as well as a talk on anti-racism from a prominent black author and professor. It was also obvious that even from before then, Expedia has been trying to improve the gender ratio, as well as the under-representation of other groups such as LGBT+ and disabilities, as I heard these issues brought up in meetings and we underwent training on better communication for these groups.

The leadership series talks were very helpful since most of the speakers started with a description of their career path, and how they ended up at Expedia. They all offered advice and suggestions on how to be successful in our own future paths. I also found my buddy to be helpful with discussion on further study, such as master's degrees for an Analytics career. As I said before, I felt like that I gained good insight into what being a full time employee is like, which is vital in deciding whether this is the career for you.

The pay for the internship was actually rather good, I got around twice the amount I was paid for in my internship last summer. They also reimbursed the expenses for my trip to London for the assessment centre, although it took quite a long time for the money to come through. Expedia also originally offered a very generous 'relocation bonus', although that was removed in the post-covid offer, understandably since we were all working from home so would not be commuting to the London Office.

My team had regular 'elevenses meetings' multiple times a week, which were meant to replicate the 'coffee break chats' you would have at work. There was obvious camaraderie between the team members as I remember once hearing a discussion about the new team top trumps, which had cards for each member's favourite holiday destination. I also attended the Analytics division quiz after the weekly Marketing and Analytics forum every Wednesday, which was hosted by a different person every week.

We had weekly intern socials, although after a few weeks I stopped attending these as I personally found it hard to connect with people I'd never physically met before. Expedia had actually arranged for us to meet our teams in person in early March, but coronavirus had just started to become a problem and they decided to hold off for a bit, and obviously it then became impossible to facilitate. So although unfortunate, it's understandable why this was the case.

I'm very lucky that this experience still went ahead, albeit virtually, as a lot of other companies that I applied for decided to cancel their internships. There were some teething issues but the early careers team were very proactive in collecting feedback, so I have no doubt that these will be resolved the next time that Expedia runs something like this. I gained useful experience and insight which I have no doubt will enhance my CV and improve my career prospects., and I got paid for the privilege. Furthermore there's a chance of getting a 'conversion' offer for after you graduate uni,.