Retirement summer intern Review

The internship was thoroughly enjoyable. It provided excellent insight into the field and gave me invaluable transferrable skills. The people I worked with were great and very helpful. The work was challenging at times but also rewarding to do. Overall I would recommend this internship to other people as a valuable learning experience.

My colleagues definitely valued me. because they consistently gave me work for actual clients, that would otherwise be done by other full-time employees. There was a great deal of trust and confidence placed in me but they also expected excellence and a high level of accuracy. The internship didn't involve any menial work such as filing or copying documents, which was great.

There was definitely a high level of support throughout my internship. There were biweekly catch-up meetings with a person from Human Resources during which we discussed how I was getting along and whether I was fitting in with the team. Additionally there were a few meetings with my line manager to discuss my progress and areas that I needed to improve in.

The amount of work I had to do tended to fluctuate. On some occasions I was quite busy, having to stay past the usual finish time. At other times I didn't have much going on, however all the interns had personal projects to do for the duration of the whole internship, which kept me occupied during those quiet times.

There was a high level of responsibility given to me. I had to do a lot of work for actual clients, which reflects on the company image so I had to do the work up to the company standards. I was of course supervised and could ask more senior people if I had any questions or was unsure what to do.

I learned a wide range of profession specific and transferrable skills. The internship was definitely useful for getting a foundation in actuarial science, which would come in handy if I was to pursue an actuarial career. On the other hand I practiced skills such as teamwork, timely delivery and work professionalism.

The atmosphere in the office was quite friendly but also professional. People were generally quite approachable for questions, which was very helpful. If you met someone in the tea room, you could almost always strike a conversation because people are curious about the interns. There is on the other hand a level of professionalism when dealing with client work.

There was a good level of organization. The first couple of weeks were spent training to use proprietary and generic software as well as learning the theoretical side of the profession. There were also quite a few social events organized for our time there. We were also tasked with doing a few individual and group projects throughout the whole internship, which was helpful to get to know the other interns.

I feel the company was very invested in its interns. There were many hours of training and colleague time spent on us and the company is committed to both giving us a good experience of the job and hopefully setting us up to start the graduate position if we liked it and met the company standards.

I feel that the company invests a lot in its interns by providing a lot of training and time. As a result the company offers graduate roles to everyone who met the company standards. There is also no need to go through the application process again since the interview and assessment is the same for graduate roles and interns.

There were many social events going on all the time. There were drinks organized by the company once a month with free drinks, which were a blast. There are also gatherings in the local pub whenever people pass exams or someone gets a promotions. There is also a football game every week and a badminton session once a month for those interested.

The cost of living in the town the office is based in is quite high. Rent, food and going out are all quite expensive, but that is due to the area. I chose to live near work and walk which definitely saved me a lot of time commuting, however was quite expensive. Some of the other interns chose to live elsewhere and so spent less on living but longer commuting.