Public Affairs Intern Review

I very much enjoyed my internship in the Public Affairs Team at Macmillan. Everyone had lots of energy and enthusiasm and were keen for me to get involved in different aspects of work to give me a good breadth of experience. I sometimes found working at Macmillan overwhelming due to its size and the amount of areas it is involved in, but it made me think carefully about what sort of jobs I might want to pursue and where I wanted to be in 5-10 years time.

I felt they very much valued my input and opinions, sometimes more construcitive criticism or being chased up on things might have been helpful as I sometimes felt that due to being an intern there was reluctance to give me feedback that wasn't positive even if at some points it might have been helpful. It is hard to tell if this is different for paid members of staff.

My manager was very honest about her working style and how she wanted to develop in terms of management skills. She was very patient and understanding when there were things that I did not understand and she helped me to think about my objectives and personal development which were areas I had never thought about before. I think we were both perhaps over ambitious in what I could achieve in the time I was there and this sometimes made me worry that I was not achieving what I should be but had we not set such targets perhaps I'd have felt I accomplished more. I think I underestimated how quickly 3 months would go and did not think hard enough about what I wanted to get out of catch ups and 121s. I feel that throughout my itnternship my mentor, manager and other colleagues were interested in what I wanted to do next and always offered their help with applications and CVs or just general advice. I felt I could always be honest and would always get honest advice back.

Some days I was very busy and would stress about fitting everything in, and then some days I would not have much to do. I was perhaps over cautious about asking people for things or for chasing them up to look at work I had done so that I could move on to the next stage as was aware that people had a lot of other work on and might not have time to go over things with me or take the time to explain more complicated tasks. I did manage to do most of the things that were asked of me but I do wish I had been more proactive in approaching other teams or in following up with other teams after inductions to see if there might be work they could give me.

I was given an appropriate amount of responsibiltiy I think. There were times when I would have liked more responsibiltiy or at least thought that I would want more but at the same time I understood that a lot of people had worked in this industry for at least a year and so had much more knowledge and experience and thus what I was given was suitable for an entry level position. The placement gave me a good insight of responsibility on different levels and how teams work together- as Macmillan is so big it is inevitable that interns will have very minor responsibilities but I still felt a lot of the work I did was useful to the team.

This is not really relevant as I have finished my degree- but as I studied politics I felt a lot of what I worked on did link to my degree and A level studies in some way as a knowledge of the political system was useful to my day to day work . I felt the internship taught me a lot about actually working in politics and public affairs and opened my eyes to a lot of jobs that I would not have known about nor understood had I not done the internship. Overall, it has been an invaluable experience that has improved my skills, confidence and knowledge.

Very friendly. Everyone was clearly very hard working and really cared about what they were doing but everyone was open as well and would have a chat.

It was very organised and we had a proper induction which meant that I got to meet other interns who were in the same position as me and we kept in touch throughout our time there. The team had had interns before me so they knew how it all worked which definitely helped, and made an effort to introduce me to a lot of other people and teams. The only thing I would say is that it would have been useful to have a halfway point for all the intersn to meet with the intern officer to discuss how it was going and if anyone had any issues or thoughts on the programme- it could have been a good chance to learn about other teams and really think about what you wanted to get out of the second half of the internship. I think it was easy to get lost in Macmillan and not be aware of what other teams were doing- however the programme was well organised and communicated well with everyone.

Not really applicable. Obviously a lot of time was invested in development and training and there were training opporunties outside of the team- but I didn't really take these up due to the level of work I was doing and the fact that I wasn't sure whether training at such an early stage would be that useful.

Very appealing. I will certainly think about applying for jobs here in the future as they take personal development very seriously and everyone you meet is helpful and welcoming. I did sometimes think it was too big an organisation to want to work in immediately but this was a great experience for me at the time.

Yes there were a group of us who would go for lunch with each other which was welcome time to compare notes and talk about our experiences!

relatively inexpensive for London

not really applicable

yes there were- although often heard about special events we could help out at through other interns rather than through our team.