A look into my internship experience at Deloitte.

Today is the last day of my summer vacation at Deloitte. It has been an exciting journey. In this blog, I will share with you my exciting 4-week journey at Deloitte, one of the largest professional services networks in the world. I hope you enjoy reading this!

It’s called Deloitte Summer Vacation.

In January 2020, I spent 4 weeks at Deloitte Platform Engineering (DPE) in their Melbourne office as a part of a program called “Deloitte Summer Vacation”. It is similar, however in my experience, superior to the other Big Four internship programs lasting between 3 to 6 weeks over the spring break.

Deloitte Summer Vacation (DSV) is vastly popular among university students for the opportunities it offers. Being during the vacation period, you will be working on big problems in one of the largest firms in the world which have both good and bad side and I will talk about this later in this article. The participants of the program will also have a chance to be offered a graduate position at Deloitte even before they graduate. And lastly, if you are a Deloitte enthusiast, it is a great chance for you to learn about your potential employer, whether working at Deloitte is a good fit for you.

So after receiving my internship offer then came a couple of months of waiting and preparing for my first day ( as an international student studying in Australia, I did need to take some extra steps which I will share with you in another post) I was contacted by my “buddy” who is a graduate from Deloitte, he was doing DSV just a year before me and volunteered to help me with the onboarding process and to guide me through the office tour which was awesome.

Then came my first day. I arrived at 8:45 in the morning and was greeted by a recruiter from the talent acquisition team to join other vacationers. We then participated together in a standard induction which lasted to around 3–4 in the afternoon. It was a long day of presentations and it felt a little overwhelming, however, I had a lot of energy thanks to Deloitte providing plenty of food and drink.

Anything you miss from the induction is in your summer vacation handbook which is sent to your email. If not, ask your buddy and I am sure he will be more than happy to help you with that.

The work

I met my buddy at the end of the first day for a quick tour of the DPE office and the building. In the next morning, we had another induction to learn about DPE, its teams and projects. Afterwards, I was assigned to a client project which later came to my attention that they allocate you to the best fit project based on your past experiences. What I really enjoyed was that you can move between projects if you ask your manager for a different client and project that you are interested in, and when I did this they were more than happy to do so.

The work on the client project is the work you would be doing as a Consultant, and I would say it is one of the most important parts of your summer vacation. Not only the feedback on your performance and approach will be factored on whether you will get a graduate offer. This is your chance to learn if the work is a good fit for you, it is very important because you will spend most of the time in your future career working on it. The work is challenging and the hour is long, make sure that it is something you love and enjoy.

I have been talking about the work as being very challenging and difficult, however, it is not a bad thing, it is difficult and you will be working under time pressure yet if you are someone like me who likes to challenge yourself and drive yourself forward, it is the best way to learn. The good thing is you will always be learning new skills, and that put you in a very good position in the long term as a professional in the consulting industry. For all that, the bad thing is, you will always be doing work that you don’t fully competent.

In the short course of my summer vacation, I have been working (and learning) many advanced technologies like Machine Learning, NLP, … and these skills will become invaluable assets on my resume. I truly enjoyed every aspect of it, I remember working with one of the vaccies around 6 pm in the evening and how happy and excited we felt solving a coding problem. It was thrilling and satisfying!

Your work is demanding and difficult, but solving huge problems means coming huge rewards.

The people

One of the things I look out for when I evaluate a firm whether it is a good environment for me is its people and the people at DPE are excellent. The people that I met and worked with were overall the best experience I had.

First, let talk about my peers, the students that were taking the vacation with me. I started my vacation with about 16 other students, the process of getting an internship offer was quite competitive hence these people, are very bright and confident. Prior to meeting them, I imaged it would be like in “The Hunger Game” where everyone fights to secure an offer but it was the opposite case. It’s true that my peers are ambitious and have a tremendous drive that pushes them to achieve, but we kind of built a connection to each other since we were going through the same situation of a tough trial, we were working hard together, solving quite strenuous and difficult problems together rather than fighting against each other. We spent most of our time together whether it was working, playing or eating and they really gave me the motivation that pushes myself forward. These people who I still keep in contact and some of them I now go to classes with.

DPE has a very strong culture, and its people are its greatest assets. The case is true to my amiable buddy, my insightful coach and my aspiring project lead. My coach shared everything she knows with me and really went extra to help me to achieve my goals. My project lead was someone very senior within DPE yet I didn’t feel intimidated working with, he was very approachable, helpful and knowledgeable. What really set him apart is his management style, non-micromanage, acknowledge his team member where relevant and often gave us vaccines, words of encouragement. All of the people that I interacted with during my time at Deloitte, they really made a huge positive impact on my experience. And I know it sounds cynical when I say this but they really made me feel like they built this whole program just for me and they really focused on me.

What I learnt

As four weeks passed, the learning curve was huge but there are things that I wish I would have known at the beginning of my vacation.

I didn’t know s###

And the first thing is to ask a question when you don’t know which I didn’t, I rather spent hours looking for an answer online rather than letting go of my ego and asking my manager for help even though I knew he knows the answer. I took my work as a testament for my performance which I guess it kinda is but it is also about getting the work done as a team and being an effective communicator. At the end, I leant that my project lead didn’t expect me to know everything, in fact, with the diversity of projects at Deloitte, one can’t know everything, so make sure you take note of what you are working on and reach out as quickly as possible when you meet a block and your seniors will appreciate it a lot.

Your biggest value proposition is your ability to learn and eager to make an impact. You don’t know everything and no one expects you to know everything. Ask when you don’t know.

Enjoy the journey

One thing that I did well is that I really had fun. I really put myself out there to try things, to talk to people, to participate in all the social event, I learnt to play soccer, I played “Overcooked” with my peers over the lunch break and I miss it and all that made a huge difference to my work life.

On our second last day, DPE had a special treat for my intake and it was a VR session at Viri VR. I had two hours to deep dive into the world of VR with my friends. The whole VR space was rented out just for us to spend our time and make the last memory of the vacation employment together. We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughing and screaming.

Working in one of the Big4 professional services firms obviously has the benefit of its reputation but also the work I did and the people I met that something that I will always appreciate, something I can take on to my further roles. There are pros and there are cons but generally, it is definitely an experience that I think worths doing and I highly recommend anyone that plans on pursuing a career in consulting to take this program.

So what do you think about this program? If you like what you are reading, go apply for it.