Summer Student Review

I enjoyed the placement at Hymans Robertson. To begin with, I felt a bit overwhelmed, and didn't feel like we had been given enough of an introduction to the work that we would be doing, leaving me to kind of guess my way through the first week or so. As I got more accustomed to the work I definitely enjoyed it more, and my project was extremely enjoyable, so it was definitely an uphill experience. To add to this, the culture is extremely friendly, and everyone (even the most senior partners) are always more than willing to give you their time. I'm not sure if pensions is for me in the long-term, and that maybe capped how much I could enjoy the internship, but I did find myself enjoyed it a bit more at the end, as I grew to understand the issues and the industry a bit more.

I was given genuine responsibility from the start, especially on my project. Once I proved that I was capable of providing good work on my own, all of my colleagues trusted that if I needed help I would ask, and otherwise they'd let me go about it on my own. I felt they valued my contributions, as often people that I provided good work for would come back to me if they had other jobs they needed doing.

I really felt we needed more of an introduction to the practice, the industry, and the work we would be doing when we started. I didn't particularly enjoy the first few weeks, as I was so overwhelmed by all the information, and seemed to be getting everything wrong. Once I got more accustomed to the work, however, I enjoyed it more. It did feel like the first few weeks were slightly wasted in that regard though. My people manager was incredibly helpful and supportive. If there was any suggestions I had, or anything I wanted to find out more about, she would provide support and suggestions and put me in contact with the right people.

To begin with, it was very slow, and I found myself reading articles on the company's web page for the first few days. It picked up soon enough, and I always had enough work to get on with, especially once I started my project. The work was up and down, with some days and weeks busier than others, but the latest I left the office was about 6:30pm, and it was usually before 5:30pm.

As previously mentioned, I was given a lot of responsibility during the placement. I was quite good with checking in with people to let them know my progress, and unless I explicitly asked for help people assumed I was fine, which I quite liked. Once I showed that I could produce good work on my own, I was trusted to be left alone and get on with it myself

I really did develop a lot of skills over the course of the internship. I gained a huge amount of knowledge about the pensions industry for such a short period of time, and we were involved with a really great variety of work while we were there. We could have been just filling in spreadsheets for 8 weeks, but I was involved with accounting work, marketing calls, factor reviews, helping to interpret Trust Deed rules, and a lot of other ad-hoc work that kept things interesting. As I'm studying actuarial science in uni, it will be incredibly useful to have had practical experience of the theoretical ideas I'm learning.

The atmosphere is incredibly friendly. Everyone in Hymans is extremely open and warm, and it's clear that they actively seek out people with these qualities. It's an open plan office, so you can just walk over and have a quick chat with anyone if there's anything you need to talk about. The partners sit next to everyone else, there's no feeling of a hierarchy at all, which is really refreshing.

I felt the internship could have been organised a little better. There didn't seem to be much work for us to do when we arrived, and a lot of the experiences each of us got were slightly based on luck and who happened to give us what type of work. Some interns were busy from the very start, some were really light. At the end of the internship, there was some confusion over how long our presentations were expected to be, and how the feedback process was structured.

There were no real personal training sessions, but I definitely feel like I developed over the course of the internship. I could see the improvements in things like transfer value calculations, so while there were few explicit training sessions, we were given the opportunity to develop ourselves because we were constantly challenged and given the chance to prove we could take on more.

The only thing that would stop me accepting a graduate job would be the work itself, which I'm not sure is my kind of work. The firm itself is ideal, incredibly friendly and genuine. Graduate jobs start at a great salary (~£31k I believe) so if this was the line of work I intended to pursue Hymans would definitely be the top of my list.

We all went for lunch together, and went out for dinner/drinks occasionally. All the other interns were really friendly and down to earth, and were all extremely competent too. I don't think any of us will be best friends, but they were really pleasant, genuine people that I'd enjoy working with if the opportunity arose again.

London is not the place to be if you want cheap things. There's a Tesco nearby where you can get a meal deal for relatively cheap, but all of the other lunch places were approaching £7 at the minimum for a lunch. Dinner was even more expensive, but there were happy hours everywhere so drinks weren't too expensive if you planned ahead.

London is great for nightlife, but we didn't go out clubbing at all. There were a lot of bars around that we would go to, and there were happy hours on drinks like cocktails and certain beers, so if we wanted to head out after work then there were plenty of nice places we could go to.

There were a number of opportunities to attend team socials after work, which I went to about half the time. There were also free tickets available for an outdoor screening of In Bruges, some people took part in a charity run, others walked the Circle Line - it seemed like there were periodically things to get involved in, and not an overwhelming amount.