IFS Summer Student Review

Every day was different since I was given the opportunity to work across various pillars. I particularly focused on products and longevity. Usually, I would be helping to prep slides, carry out research or analyse results on excel from the longevity benchmarking survey and with-profits consumer survey. Throughout, I have also attended various client meetings and team pillar calls. I have had the opportunity to speak at both. I also worked with other interns in different teams through the charity challenge.

I have become significantly more proficient in excel and Microsoft as a platform. I think over the course of this internship, I have been given the opportunity to work independently to try to figure out problems and this has allowed me to become more productive, independent and critical when given tasks. This experience has helped me improve my confidence when speaking on team calls/ in client meetings as well as improving my organisation and time management as I have been able to complete all tasks within the deadlines.

I feel like all the tasks I was given have allowed me to improve my technical skills. The team provided me with a lot of support and were always willing to answer questions which allowed me to be productive during the working day and learn how to execute tasks a lot more accurately than I did at the start of the internship. The presentation was a particularly good example of this as it provided me with an opportunity to present my own work and use all the skills I have improved over my time here.

Everyone on the team was approachable and friendly, this really motivated me to produce the best work possible for them. I found everyone that set me tasks gave a clear explanation and were more than happy to go through things again if I had any questions. They all gave me fair deadlines and I feel like all the tasks were an appropriate level of difficulty. My people manager really listened to me and helped me get the most out of these 8 weeks, giving me contacts in areas I was most interested in and ensuring I got to work with a range of levels of seniority.

Overall, the companies given me a good impression of an office environment. I found the wellbeing initiatives to be useful and it was nice to see people actually get involved in the charity challenges and step challenge I ran. There does not seem to be a divide between senior and junior employees, or between the teams in general, everyone was really approachable and friendly. It was also nice to be able to work from home and the socials were fun.

I genuinely really enjoyed it. I found the work really interesting and I think I have developed a lot of skills that would be useful outside of this placement. Everyone I had the opportunity to work with was really friendly so I always felt comfortable asking questions (even if they seemed silly). I particularly enjoyed the charity challenge that was ran for the interns as it was nice to speak to people over different teams. I feel like I was really listened to and the experience was much more about me seeing what I want to do rather than if they want to employ me in the future.

Yes

Just be yourself. At the end of the day, most people will be qualified so it is more about whether you will work well in the team. Although it is important in any job, I think it is especially important here because the teams so friendly and you will be working with different people on every project so your people skills are almost as important as your technical skills.