Summer Intern Review

The people were the best part about my internship. I never felt scared to ask questions or to go looking for help, and there was a lot of support available. What detracted from my experience was that personally I found I didn't enjoy the work I was doing most of the time.

Very valued by colleagues, as Hymans Robertson is a small company and so I knew everyone one by name and everybody knew me too. People seemed to actually care about the work I was doing and my wellbeing.

I received a lot of support from my People Manager, this is in fact one of the strongest positive points of my internship. However, there is a large amount of independence as well and so at times I felt that I did not have much guidance, but it taught me how to think for myself.

The days were very varied, and really you had a lot of control over how much work you had. I personally was very busy most days because I enjoy having things to do, but you do have to be proactive about finding work.

I was given a high level of responsibility as only one of two interns in the Investment Practice at Hymans Robertson. We were given internship projects which we worked on over the course of the 8 weeks, and this was seen as a very valuable piece of work for Hymans Robertson. Hence, I felt as though there was a lot of pressure because the work I was doing was quite important.

The training and skills I received have not really helped me with my degree studies, but they have certainly helped me for my professional life after university. The main skills I picked up were hard skills such as how to use Outlook and Excel, yet the most valuable skills were soft skills like time-management, presentation skills, dealing with people and teamwork.

Very friendly atmosphere in the office. It was clear that people were very busy and worked hard, but at the same time everyone had the time to help you if you needed it. The culture that values doing well as a team and so people are generally happy to help. That said, work-life and social-life were separate, and so there were not many social events for networking and socializing within the company.

Very well organised. I never had a problem with any of the admin throughout my internship and the HR department was very quick and organised, with very quick inductions and not many complications.

There was no real formal training, learning was mostly done on the job. Depending on the way you learn, this could be a positive point, but I personally wished they had more structured training.

The future employment prospects at Hymans depending on many factors such as whether they are hiring in the practice you are applying for, and whether people have left the company and they need a replacement. In the Investment Practice, it was made clear that there is no guarantee that Hymans will be hiring after the internship.

There was a good social scene among the other interns at Hymans in the London office. However, as a company there wasn't that much integration of people in separate departments. For such a small company, it is not particularly hard to plan more social events after work, and so this part of my internship was disappointing.

Cost of living and socializing in the City of London was extremely expensive.

The nightlife in the area was very expensive, the city of London isn't known for its nightclubs.

There was 5 a side football every other Friday, but apart from that activities outside work were very limited.