Pensions Summer Intern Review

I enjoyed working with other interns on the intern project, and found the people in the office friendly and helpful. However, I would have appreciated being given more stimulating/varied work, and was also not given much work to do.

I found the vast majority of people friendly and welcoming.

In the first few weeks of the internship interns had a meeting with their line manager to discuss how the internship was going, which I found helpful.

On a typical day I found I had approximately 3 hours in which I had no work to do, in spite of having asked everyone if they had any work I could do.

In the pensions work I was given, I was not given much responsibility (due to the nature of the type of work). The intern project gave us an opportunity to have responsibility when carrying out tasks involving our "client".

The intern project helped develop teamwork and communication skills, as well as report writing and presentation skills. The training received for the pensions work is unlikely to assist me as much in the future as much of it was not explained in context - people setting work described what to do rather than explaining why it's done in a particular way, so it would not be possible to do the work by myself without copying a previous example.

The general atmosphere was pleasant - people were friendly but also hardworking.

The intern projects and feedback process were well organised, however we were not told about a 3rd induction day we needed to be in london for until two days before. The lack of work given perhaps shows a lack of preparation for having interns.

Interns were given 3 training days, as well as training in local offices. This was a lot of time invested in us, however a large proportion of the presentations were not very useful/informative. The lack of work given was an obstacle to my personal development in the office as I was not given much opportunity to learn about the work done.

I enjoy the atmosphere in the office, and would happily consider employment with the organisation, however from this internship I feel I would be more suited to a different department.

This probably varied by office. In our office the interns would regularly have lunch together.

Much cheaper than in London but still not really cheap.

We were invited to go to the pub with employees after work each week, and also to join in in weekly activities such as badminton.