Rotational Finance Intern Review

In the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable teams I processed invoices and took payments from our customers. If payments needed to be chased then I would call customers and advise how much was owed. In the Financial Reporting Team I completed monthly responsibility such as preparing and posting journals and during month end I supported the team by completing lots of processes and checks to ensure we reported everything within our responsibility accurately. In the Risk and Control team I completed testing to make sure our controls were working as intended.

Yes, I gained a good understanding of the Shared Service Centre through my day to day role and I also learnt about other parts of the business during career talks and one-off projects. My organisation, interpersonal skills etc have all improved as a result of completing the placement year.

Not as much as I would have liked. I did take ownership of a lot of tasks during my placement but not all of the tasks were very involved (I would not see the end to end process). However, I expressed this and have been advised that the future intern's experience will be different.

CooperVision provided each intern with a Mentor and I believe this was one of the most valuable experiences/takeaways from the year. I also had lots of good managers during my rotation who were happy and usually available to support me as and when I needed it.

Everybody was extremely friendly but in the shared service centre there was very little collaboration on tasks. Apart from my training I spent very little time working with anyone else. This has its pros and cons but a mixture of independent work and team work/projects would have been better. I did feel the shared service centre lacked ambition and for someone just beginning their career that is something I will definitely be looking for in my next role.

I did not enjoy it so much unfortunately. There were aspects, such as the mentor programme which I loved but for the most part I did not feel my day to day tasks were interesting or teaching me as much as I would have liked. However, I do believe it was a really good entry level job and stepping stone for my future career - only time will tell but I'm grateful for the opportunity and glad I decided to complete the year.

No

I would advice that they apply to one of the marketing roles. Both the marketing interns had an amazing year and spoke very highly of their experience. They seemed to get a lot more exposure to senior people within the business and they were also working on lots of different projects which seemed to carry a lot more responsibility than my role or the other finance roles. Although, I hope to become a Chartered Accountant and I presume the Rotational Finance Intern role has provided me more relevant experience for the career I would like to pursue.