Commercial Intern Review

I loved my year at L'Oréal. The main thing that stands out to me is the calibre of people you are surrounded by. There is a real buzz in the office, with people clearly at the top of their game, whilst also taking the time to stop and enjoy themselves. There is also a real sense of team spirit, and people are always more than happy to help you develop in any way they can.

I felt highly valued by my colleagues who not only trusted me with important projects, but also consistently gave me praise and feedback when projects went well.

I had a great relationship with my line manager who was always happy to take time out to focus on my own development. She also ensured I was getting a range of projects that developed my own skills as well as helping the business.

I always had on-going projects to work on and due to the dynamic nature of the work, I also often had unexpected additional tasks to complete. Generally I worked a 9-5 day which suited me well. My only criticism is that often managers would give you the same workload regardless of if you were going on annual leave, meaning I had to work longer hours either side to make up for my days off. Ideally, this would be taken into account and distributed around the team.

I was given full responsibility to run my own projects which were carefully selected by my manger to develop me and help the business. I couldn't ask for more in this respect.

Even in my first few weeks back at university, I have found that my insights into the beauty industry have been invaluable for applying the learning during lectures and seminars. I have also used my experience in assignments, and plan to use my placement as context for my dissertation. Overall, it has been hugely valuable!

There was always a buzz in the office and a real sense of team spirit. This said, people did often seem stressed by their workload.

Extremely well organised. There was an endless amount of training and development opportunities, as well as periodic reviews across the year culminating in an extensive report/review of my placement year.

As mentioned above, there was constantly training you could book onto. The majority was not compulsory but you could really engage with your development if you chose to.

I hope to work at L'Oreal in the future. They are a great employer with many perks. There is so many schemes and opportunities which make it stand out from many of the big corporate companies. It is also a young, fun and dynamic workplace.

There was less of a social scene than I expected within the intern community. This said, I did make a few good friend in my division and on my team.

The office is in Hammersmith and I was living in Shepherds bush, so the costs were understandably high. However, this is simply a product of working & living in London.

I didn't experience much nightlife in the area but there was lots of nice pubs and restaurants. Hammersmith is also well connected to the rest of London so it's easy to get somewhere with more nightlife if you wanted to.

There were lots of opportunities to be involved in external projects, networking events, sports/exercise classes etc.