Summer Intern - Global Broking Centre Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship at Aon. Despite the ongoing pandemic, a huge effort was made to intergrate all the interns into their new teams and provide them with a valuable expereince. I was able to get involved in work on live accounts as well as given the oppurtunity to speak to many different colleagues from across the firm. The work was challenging and varied, but not stressful to a point where it would be unenjoyable.

This was more difficult than usual due to working in the virtual environment. However, the buddy system was really successful and I felt I could direct all my questions towards them openly. Colleagues were appreciative of the work I did for them on tasks and were recpetive to my requests for feedback and catch ups. We also had regular team catch up calls and more social events which we were included in which made the team feel more cohesive and welcoming.

My manager was relatively new to the position and going through an international move so was not super hands on in my day to day work. This role was more fulfilled by my Connector which I think worked extremely well. Having said this, my manager has been very supportive over the whole process, scehduling weekly catch ups with me to stay in contact and answer some of my higher level questions both about the firm and technical.

I think my workload was fairly well balanced. I had tasks to complete each day but not so many that it was stressful. I was able to balance my time between varies projects, self directed online learning and business aligned work very well. Other team members were also understanding of the fact I had other projects to complete alongside their work and were relatively flexible on their timelines. I could have handelled some more work at times but I think given the nature of working from home this was managed well.

I was given an appropriate level of responsibility and ownership over work tasks that I was set. Working from home this was not always easy but the team utilised webex to supervise tasks on live client accounts. There were some IT issues throughout the placement that made this more difficult but all colleagues were proactive in setting me tasks with an appropriate level of supervision and allowing me to get on with them, making my own mistakes and learning from them.

General networking and communication skills I have gained during this placement have been invaluable and will be taken forward in my career and future university studies. I have also learned a variety of techincal skills from using placing systems to summarising property surveys. Teamworking, developed in my charity project, has also been a huge part of this placement and this will be a key skill that I take forward into work placements in the future.

Not really applicable as working from home for the entirity of this placement. This being said, all Aon colleagues were friendly,warm and welcoming and integrated me well into the team. The general atmosphere was relaxed, supportive and it felt as if anyone would be willing to give you a hand if and when you needed it. There was a good balance of ages across the team I worked in which helped to balance the dynamic of the group.

The Onboarding and beginning few weeks of the internship was very well orgainsed. There was frequent contact from staff members from early careers, updating us and outlining what the next steps would be for the programme. The early part of the internship had a clear structure with many timetabled learning sessions for us to attend. Towards the end of the intenship when we were fully integrated into our separate teams this tailed off a bit and I think there could have been more guidance and structure regarding final feedback meetings.

There was a lot of time spent educating interns of the basics of the insurance and reinsurance markets in the first phase of the internship. These sessions were informative and were delivered effectively. There was also some online training to complete throughout the internship but this felt slighly tedious and not hugely relevant to specific business lines. The fact the internship was going ahead despite the pandemic shows a huge comminment and investment into future talent by Aon which should not go unnoticed.

There has been a clear timeline sent to interns about what we can expect about graduate roles at Aon which has been good to put everyone's mind at ease. I think the internship makes a great pathway into the company and I am feeling relatively positive about my prospects at the company. There was an adequate amount of feedback given prior to the final interview which puts interns in a fantastic position to evaluate their own performance before going forward for the graduate role.

Not really applicable given the virtual nature of this placement scheme however, there were various efforts made to connect colleagues across geographies which I enjoyed. I was also informed that before the pandemic, there was a very active social scene amongst colleagues which is certainly encouraging. The various Aon colleague networks make it easy to connect with others that have similar experiences to you which can help to make you feel included even though we are all working virtually.

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Again, this is not really applicable due to the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic but from conversations with colleagues there are various social events to take part in from within Aon and other similar companies.