My virtual internship experience with Deloitte (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on: February 11, 2022

Last Updated on: May 31st, 2022

Post Category: Student Experience

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Earlier this week, I wrapped up my vacationer internship at Deloitte. For this blog post, I will be writing in continuation of my first post – going into some more highlights from my experience, during the last two weeks of my placement. If you haven’t read part 1 of my virtual internship experience with Deloitte, or would like more context before reading on, you can check out my previous blog post here.

Unfortunately, due to some health concerns I have faced, I couldn’t go into the office (again), so my experience over the four weeks has been entirely virtual. However, I hope some of the things I learnt help provide some insight about what it’s like working at Deloitte!

The Deloitte-Tableau fever dream – an insight into Deloitte’s alliances

On one morning, I saw an interesting post shared around the Data Visualisation community on Yammer. It was an internal Deloitte Viz Game (a data visualisation competition) held in collaboration with Tableau. Having worked with Tableau over the past year and a half as a Student Ambassador, I thought it would be awesome to see what the collaboration was all about, so I got in touch with someone who helped manage the collaboration. I honestly would’ve taken part if it didn’t kick off after my end date and wasn’t exclusive the US and EMEA regions!

After reaching out to one of the contacts on the intranet page for the competition, I got in touch with a Senior Manager based in the US who was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to chat with me before my end date. From our conversation, I primarily learnt about Deloitte’s alliances with many different product companies. Deloitte actually has alliances with companies like Tableau, AWS and Snowflake (to name a few) that help Deloitte’s workforce build up their expertise with a range of different tools to support their clients. Ultimately, having such alliances grants Deloitte workers access to learning marketable cutting-edge tools while also keeping Deloitte competitive in the industry.

While rather obvious in hindsight, it was insightful learning about how Deloitte and its teams remain relevant across a range of industries. Perhaps I should go back just to build up my Tableau skills and see the interesting work they do with the tool… I’ll see!

Connecting with more Data & AI leaders, and more social investment

Near the closing of our placement, we got the chance to connect with more Data & AI leaders – particularly the talent group leads and the national D&AI partner! They actually reached out to us vacationers and put in a time on our calendars; one session with the talent group leads, which invited all D&AI vacationers across Australia, and one session with the national partner, for the D&AI vacationers based in Sydney. Overall, it was nice to hear about their career progression, their insight into industry trends and how they and the company stay relevant.

For those who are curious about what a talent group is: basically, Data & AI is split into two streams or sub-teams called “talent groups”: Data & Analytics Modernisation and AI & Automation. I believe in previous years, before the restructuring, you would work in a particular stream and that would determine the type of projects you got to work on. But I’ve heard from one of the consultants during my placement that it’s just a label and it isn’t that significant…? Essentially, it’s a category of work within D&AI, for the lack of clear insight.

Anyway, the lovely TI&I team, some of the graduates and some of my fellow vacationers also kept delivering opportunities for the vacationers to connect with people and learn more about the practice. The TI&I team got us connected with a director and specialist director within the D&AI team, and they also put in a time for us to chat and play games.

On the second-last Wednesday of our placement, the D&AI vacationers organised and went for dinner in the CBD. And not only that, one of the graduates organised a dinner on our last day – for both the vacationers and graduates/analysts. Unfortunately, while I was super SUPER keen to go to both, I had to pull out because of my health, but I’m sure it must have been really fun for those who went.

The vacationer program closing session and wrapping up…

On the first week of February, many interns across Australia were closing off their last week of their 4-8 week placement. On Monday afternoon, the Graduate team organised a closing session with the interns, where we got to reflect on our experience, do a bit of speed networking with other interns, and know about the next steps. It did seem like a lot of the interns were quite reserved and out of it during the networking though; must have been because the session was so late in the day!

Regarding the next steps, essentially, the Graduate Talent team would take about four weeks before getting in touch with all of the vacationers regarding their performance; if the review/feedback is positive, the vacationer might get an offer to join the team as a graduate. What was also nice was that the team shared some coverage on their exciting graduate program, and some of the extras that came with returning after accepting the grad offer.

On Tuesday, I had a conversation with my career coach regarding his (and my project coach’s) review of my performance, and on Wednesday, I closed off the tasks I worked on and went to the office to drop off my laptop (with the case, headphones and mouse) at my assigned time!

My overall thoughts, what’s next, and if you want to learn more!

Overall, the experience I’ve had at Deloitte was really insightful and it was a great opportunity to connect with lots of different people across the business. From a project standpoint, I felt I could have been stretched a bit more if the placement was a bit longer, but nonetheless I had great exposure to the type of the work/clients the D&AI team manages and I got to touch up on some technical skills I’ve developed in the past. Ultimately, would I join back as a graduate if I were to receive an offer in the coming weeks? Honestly, I am not sure; while the experience has been great, I hope to explore the other roles/companies/industries that are available throughout my final year of study.

Did I enjoy the culture at Deloitte? Definitely!

Do I prefer working in a corporate environment? Couldn’t tell you.

Do I want to go ahead and pursue consulting? Still at the front of my mind, but couldn’t tell you.

VERY unsure, but I’ll figure it out.

And honestly, it was a huge bummer that I couldn’t go into the office and see the view the team had of the harbour and hang out with some of the graduates and other vacationers. Oh well!

But if you would like to get some insight into the experiences of some of my fellow vacationers who have all been to the office at least once, I have dropped their names below (you can probably find them by doing a quick LinkedIn search). I’m sure they’d be happy to answer any questions you may have should you have any!

• Alex Feng
• Derek Liu
• Joanne Kim
• Julia Raleigh
• Ting Li
• Tony Wang
• Yathin Suresh
• Yvonne Thich
• Zainab Al Nakeeb