This afternoon we have another current student sharing some insight into their experience of undertaking an internship this summer, and how the internship allowed him to build up some great skills that he hadn’t even been aware of previously. Robbie is a 5th year MPhys student.
This summer, I had a great internship experience working at the digital office for Kingfisher Plc, the parent company of B&Q, Screwfix and a few other international home improvement organisations. Here, we were working on a big project, creating a new digital platform for customers to use. While this sounds like a bit of a bore, it wasn’t just updating the website and refining the app; we were coming up with innovative digital solutions for home improvement problems using ‘design thinking’. This is a term that is becoming a big buzz word, and doesn’t mean ‘making things pretty’, but refers to a methodology and mind-set that guides the entire business strategy.
This internship gave me a taste of a few different things like retail, business analysis and digital technology, but it also gave me an insight into consultancy. The hub I was in was actually populated mostly by Accenture consultants, and working and speaking with them has led me to apply for a few different digital consultancy graduate schemes. However, while I saw that consultancy was a great area to work in, I was also warned multiple times that being a consultant can bring very limited power in choosing where you go, and that not all clients are as lucrative as the central London, modern digital hub that I was in.
After finishing my internship, one thing that stood out to me was what I had learned about ‘Agile’ and ‘Scrum’ methodology, as these were phrases that I had never heard of beforehand. However, I now know that a basic grasp of these concepts can really help you in job applications for any sort of digital role – I’ve been told that if a candidate can bring up agile in the application process for an agile organisation, they will be looked at very favourably.
If you would like to find out more about Agile and Srum methodologies, Robbie recommends the following resources: scrum.org, Mountain Goat Software and the podcast Agile for Humans.
