8 weeks of our annual summer internships are coming to an end very soon, so the NAO graduate blog has asked Jannan Gunaratnam to sum up his experiences. Many thanks to Jannan and all the other interns from EmployAbility and Windsor Fellowship for their support over the summer!
I applied to the NAO because of their strong reputation and influence they have on public spending. I was hoping the internship would give me an insight as to whether this role would be for me and something I would like to do a few years down the line. A few weeks into it, and having gone through different training sessions and spending time with my audit team, I can now tell you that it has.
The training here was second to none and it was valuable to get an insight into what you can expect when you start working on a task and how to get the best out of your work. My manager was also supportive in booking additional training sessions and gave advice as to whether it would be helpful or not which I thought was beneficial for my self development.
One of the highlights of the training sessions was going to a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting in Parliament. This was because I knew nothing about politics and I heard some of these meetings were quite entertaining. The PAC meeting I attended on the NAO’s report on the Work Programme lived up to the hype. I and some of the fellow interns also saw Nick Clegg on this day as we couldn’t get in the meeting room when the public first went in, and whilst we waited outside, my fellow intern pointed out Nick Clegg walking past us.
After the training sessions finished we spent the rest of the time with our teams and I felt very welcome from the first time I was introduced to my manager, my buddy and the rest of the team. Everyone was supportive and even the directors were down to earth and offered to give advice or share their experience which I willingly took and honestly it was nothing to be scared of, and helped improve my confidence.
Whilst I was working with my team I was immediately given several tasks that kept me busy throughout this internship and I felt very privileged as one of the pieces of work I was given would contribute to a report that would hopefully be published. So even as an intern I was given a lot of responsibility from day one which made me feel part of the team and there was plenty of support available whilst I was completing this task.
As I approach the end of my internship and having previously worked for one year at a fund administrating firm, I can definitely confirm that the NAO is a place where I want to work, from the support and training available to the various departments and teams you can work with.