Summer Associate Review

I enjoyed this placement to a large extent. The people are all friendly, approachable, and willing to answer questions. The work is interesting and feels valuable. Overall, there is a lot to learn but it is all interesting and engaging. Teams help you to build out your knowledge, which is valuable when you are able to apply this knowledge in tasks later on. Although there were initially technical issues, these were swiftly resolved and did not feel burdensome.

I felt valued by colleagues throughout most of the internship. The organisation is large, and hierarchy is sprawling, which makes it difficult to develop relationships outside of your core team. However, I felt strongly valued by those within the core team, as they listened to my opinions and answered all questions I had. The Community Project that I completed with other interns also contributed to this, as the interns all valued each other as a team.

I was given a fair amount of guidance by management and by supervisor. My line manager was always available for any questions I had, and was very helpful in helping with both the onboarding process, and throughout the duration of the internship. Although guidance given by the rest of the onboarding team left a little to be desired, this was hampered by technical issues mostly caused by the work from home due to COVID-19. I would not expect these to be repeated in the future.

I had ample to keep me busy on a daily basis. Being a part of a business team as well as the Community Project meant that I always had outstanding tasks and things to balance. At no point did this feel overwhelming. There were a few points where I felt I had extra capacity, and had to ask for more work. However, this was always quickly provided and I was able to proceed without feeling bored.

I felt I had much responsibility during the course of the Community Project. Having a project that you complete in teams of just interns allows you to feel like you are creating something that you can take proper ownership over, and as such, you feel a large amount of responsibility. While I did not feel I had as much responsibility within business teams, I still felt like my work was valued and contributed to other pieces in a meaningful way.

I felt the skills that I developed would help me in my future career, but not in my degree studies. The skills that I developed were more relevant to stakeholder management and participating and contributing to meetings meaningfully, which are skills quite removed from my degree studies. However, I did not feel that training I received did much to develop my skills - rather, most of the development was on the job. This is symptomatic of the strange timing of the training. Often I did not feel I could apply training to my tasks.

As this internship was done over the course of COVID-19, I did not have a chance to go into the office. Instead, the entire experience was work from home. Although it was clear that the organisation made attempts to foster an atmosphere in a virtual environment, this is understandably not an easy task, and it was perhaps considerably more difficult to develop relationships with other team members and interns on the program at home, than at the office.

The overall internship was mostly well organised and set up. The first week had ample content and structure, and allowed for the rest of the internship to flow swiftly from this. However, technical issues at the beginning of the work placement made the content and structure more difficult to follow. In particular, the laptop for work from home was delivered a couple of days after the beginning of the internship, meaning I had to dial in from my personal device.

The organisation clearly invested a considerable amount in training and development. There were two main programs for this. Firstly, there was an online training program to follow, which interns could do at their own pace. Secondly, there was online sessions through Microsoft Teams that were interactive. However, the former was not particularly helpful, engaging, or relevant. The latter tended to drag on and at points, were not very engaging, despite the best efforts of the facilitators.

The future employment prospects are not particularly appealing within the organisation. Although offers to join the graduate scheme are not hard to come by, the employment prospects following the graduate scheme are at best unclear, and at worst, confusing. The opportunity to take a secondment during the graduate scheme is attractive, but being unable to join the firm you are seconded to after the end of the secondment is not. Overall, the organisation still feels public sector in terms of a lack of clear career progression process.

There was an average social scene among fellow placements students and colleagues. This was not helped by the COVID-19 pandemic and the work from home. However, individuals still made efforts to organise virtual events. Although these are not the most conducive to a good social environment, it is what you make of it. Those who try to make more of an effort to organise such social events got more out of it than those who did not.

Irrelevant due to work from home.

Irrelevant due to work from home.

Irrelevant due to work from home.