Tesco Technology Intern-Scrum Master Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my 10 week internship! The people I worked with were all very socialable, interesting and welcoming. I felt like I learnt a lot about myself and the business. However the role itself became a little mundane towards the end as a lot of the reporting was done manually and I wasted a lot of time waiting for large Excel spreadsheets to process.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. I felt I was treated as a full-time permenant employee and became a true part of the team. I think my colleagues enjoyed having me on the team and trusted me.

I sat next to my line manager and therefore he was always on hand if I needed any support or guidance whether that be related to the role or to my personal development. I also had weekly one-to-ones where we could talk about this in more detail. Furthermore we were actively encouraged to book time into our manager's manager's diary or our director's diary in order to get feedback from those in higher level positions too.

Each Monday was fairly busy as we had the weekly reporting to do. Alongside this I had my own individual project to work on as well as completing other ad-hoc jobs and attending meetings and events. Although I would say I never felt really busy or pushed to my limit and I felt a lot of time was wasted waiting for large Excel spreadsheets to process.

I felt I was given a decent amount of responsibility. I was given the opportunity to work independently (with support still there if I needed it). In particular, after two weeks my manager was away and therefore I had to compile and produce the weekly reports myself which I felt they trusted me to do a good job after only two weeks.

There was a strong focus on personal development and I completed a Personal Development Plan on what competencies and skills I wanted to work on in particular over the course of the internship. It made me actually think about my strengths and areas for development and meant I was aware of them and could start working on them. I think this is an important thing that I will take away with me when applying for jobs, completing my final year of uni and when I start working.

I really enjoyed working with the people on my desk - they were all very friendly and welcoming. We all got on really well and had weekly team quizzes and a fantasy football league which I got involved it which was really nice and kept everyone in high spirits.

Overall, I would say the aspects of the internship (ie. which desk I was assigned to, intern development days, social events etc.) were well thought through however the communication of this was VERY poor. For example, I was only told 3 weeks before which Head Office I would be working in which made finding accommodation very difficult. Also within the business, communication of some events and the sign-off presentation at the end were lacking.

I felt like the company completely invested in me as a person from day one. The interview/assessment centre focused very much on me as an individual, my personality and my competencies. Then we had a Personal Development Plan so we could plan which skills we wanted to work on developing. If anything there was a little too much focus on company-wide leadership skills.

The positives: Great friendly culture, opportunities to move and work in different areas of the business, multi-national The negatives: Lots of manual reporting, Slow IT systems, Very big company so sometimes hard to stand out/get recognised and lots of unnecessary HR forms.

There was a good social scene amongst interns and IPs. Both sitting together at lunch (organised ourselves) to development days and social events organised by the Entry Level Team and graduates ie. Induction day, Leadership Skills day, Sports day, Sign-off day.

Welwyn Garden City is fairly reasonable to live given that it is 20minutes away from London.

The nightlife in Welwyn Garden City is not amazing - there are a few pubs but not many however it is only a 20 minute train journey away from King's Cross so it doesn't matter too much.

There weren't that many activities to get involved in outside of work. We organised a few social activities and had a Fantasy Football league. I know there is a wind band/a couple of sports teams but not many and nothing that appealed to my interests.