Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at Standard Life Aberdeen. The team I was placed in were welcoming and supportive and I found the work that I was doing to be both interesting and appropriate to my skills. As the internship went on, I felt that I was able to make real contributions to my team and enhance a variety of my own skills.

The members of my team as well as my line manager were supportive throughout the entire internship and I was able to take on more responsibility as the weeks went by. By the end of the internship I was a contributing member of the team. I felt valued by my manager and colleagues from the first week.

The manager that I had throughout the internship was great. He regularly checked up on me to ensure that I was kept busy and that I understood what I was doing. He always took the time to explain concepts and processes with detail. I also had contact with senior management in the company who were always willing to give their time to talk and were supportive in providing advice and guidance.

The first couple of weeks of the internship were slow, mainly as I got to grips with everything. After the first couple of weeks I found myself to be busy on a daily basis. Whether this was through work I was doing on my project or on business as usual tasks.

The project that I completed ultimately had significance for the organisation and it was exciting to work on a project with such importance. In doing this, as well as other tasks, I felt I was given a lot of responsibility which added to the challenge and made the experience all the better.

The work that I undertook was interesting and I developed a number of skills, however I haven’t found a huge amount of relevance in this work to the classes I take at university. Overall though the skills I learned will certainly be of benefit for my career in the future.

I found the office to be very relaxed. The people were also very supportive and friendly, I didn’t come across anyone who was hostile or uninterested in offering guidance. The atmosphere in the office was calm and friendly and I enjoyed working in it.

There were technical issues at the beginning of the internship which hindered my progress at the start, however, this was cleared up and fixed quickly. Thereafter I didn’t face many more issues. There was also development sessions put on by HR most weeks which were interesting and helpful, especially when we were meeting with senior leaders.

There was sessions put on every week to assist us in personal development. I was also able to sign up to training sessions through the company intranet which were beneficial. We were placed on a one day excel training course which I found useful in developing my excel skills in my internship and beyond.

It was clear from the beginning that places on the graduate scheme would be available to interns. The opportunities on the grad scheme are exciting, as grads are able to take up different roles in several rotations to gain experience in different areas of the business. The internship is a good foundation for this.

We all went out most weeks, especially during the fringe. We organised a lot of different social nights amongst us and everyone got on really well.

I stayed at home and travelled to the internship so I did not face the same living costs as many of the other interns who took accommodation.

Doing the internship in Edinburgh during the festival was great for nightlife. During August we regularly organised shows to go and see and there are plenty of nice bars and restaurants around Edinburgh that we would go to after work. Out with the festival we still organised nights out to bars on a Friday after work.

There were some opportunities to get involved in volunteering and other events.