Intern Review

I really enjoyed and learnt a lot in my nine-week internship at Aon. I was based in the London office with the actuarial consulting pensions team. I ran a 5K, collected donations in Liverpool Street station, raised over £4,500 for Little Havens Hospice, worked with high profile companies and met some wonderful people.

All the people were really lovely and were a pleasure to work with. They were all happy to help and willing to delegate work to me. Initially I worked mostly with the graduates however as I attended the socials, I quickly got to know and work with other employees in the London office.

It varied greatly throughout the internship. At the beginning there was a light workload however it gradually built as we settled in and learnt the ropes. We were required to source our own work from the start; therefore we were able to build relationships with our colleagues quickly. We were also allocated half a day a week to work on CSR so could work on this whenever our office work load was light.

Through completing transfer value calculations, analysing defined contribution data on Excel, writing reports and attending client meetings, I was able to develop my knowledge of the pensions industry, improve my technical and communication skills. Working on the corporate social responsibility project was a good chance to develop team working skills and get to know other students on the internship.

The Early Careers Recruitment team have organised the internship so that it runs very smoothly. They keep in good contact throughout and provided good support in the training days and the final steps. They organised the corporate social responsibility project, which was my favourite aspect of the summer internship at Aon.

The internship was really competitive - we were told that there were one, maybe two, graduate positions available in our team (there were four interns). We were assessed throughout the programme and were also formally reviewed through our CSR presentation and report, and our individual presentations to our teams. Unfortunately I did not receive an offer but I thoroughly enjoyed my experience.

The three training days was a good way to meet all the students on the internship. The social scene was good, we often went for drinks after work. The corporate social responsibility project encouraged all the interns to meet up and get to know each other. I went to some of the other CSR groups fundraising events to support them.

Most of my money was spent on travel to and from work (about £60 per week) and on food for lunch - the Leadenhall building offered really nice, affordable food and free coffees during certain times. In terms of socialising, all of the interns were bought their drinks by other employees so it was very cheap.

There were tons of opportunities. They had football and cricket teams you could play with. We went to play rounders in Regents Park, went on a bar/pub crawl, would often go out for drinks after work and enjoyed quiz nights, horse racing nights and 5K runs through the corporate social responsibility projects.