Summer Intern Review

The internship was an excellent way for me to get to know the company better. We received a broad understanding of the company itself with weekly Lunch and Learn sessions teaching us about everything from Diversity & Inclusion to reinsurance broking. Within the team, I got an excellent feel for the office culture and enhanced my technical understanding of reinsurance at the same time.

The office culture is fantastic, everyone is very friendly and will always make time to sit down with you and have a chat about whatever it is you want to. My colleagues seemed just as interested to hear about my background and career ambition as I was to hear about them. On a few occasions throughout the internship I was able to have the opportunity to contribute work that will be used by the team, with this in mind it was much easier to feel valued and I definitely did.

Without doubt, the support from everyone in the team is brilliant, and this extends to beyond my direct management. Everyone is very willing to help you out where you get stuck and I never got the impression that I was being a nuisance when colleagues were explaining things. This is something I perceive to be vital to successful learning through the internship and early stages of my career and it was done very well at Aon.

During an internship, it is important to understand that you are unlikely to be able to do anything that is ‘business critical’, if you do manage to get that opportunity then that’s fantastic. It was a very quiet period of the year for my team, so not everyone has lots of work to do, or therefore for you. The resources available are plentiful, and if you are keen to learn more about the business and the industry then there is ample resource to do so. Moreover, everyone around the office, both in my specific team and from other teams is always more than willing to sit down/go for a coffee to learn a bit more about what specifically they do.

In the first half of the internship I was working on a specific project independently, the deliverables were all entirely dependent on the work that I did and my application, certainly in this period I was given a good amount of responsibility. However, during the second half I was contributing to various other projects to reduce the time pressures of my colleagues. Overall, a good level of responsibility was handed to me.

The skills I have learned will not assist me in my degree, because I have graduated. However, if I hadn’t yet graduated then I believe the analytical skills I have developed would certainly have helped me in my final year of university. The interpersonal and technical skills that I have developed are very transferable without doubt and will stand my in good stead for the early stages of my career.

This was one of my favourite aspects of the job, the atmosphere was brilliant. I was surrounded by a team of like minded individuals who were very driven and focused. This certainly helped to bring the best out of me during the internship and something that made the experience a very enjoyable one. Everyone is very friendly and will always make time to chat if that’s something you would like.

The overall internship set up was brilliant. We started with two days of broader training where we learned a lot about the wider company and met all the other nationwide interns. This was also the start of the Corporate Social Responsibility projects that the interns would deliver in groups of 8 or 9. We would have weekly Lunch and Learn session where we get to learn in more detail all about the wider company. This all occurs around the everyday work that we would get up to with our teams.

At such an early stage in my career, I am well aware of the training and personal development that needs to occur in order to thrive throughout my career. The set up of the internship allowed me to develop my interpersonal skills whilst maintaining a strong focus on the technical elements of the job at hand. Everyone was eager to help me where I needed it and I personally feel I have developed well over the summer internship.

Everything I have experienced from the internship makes it a very appealing place to work. From the atmosphere within the team to the clear progression opportunities within the company suggest to me that I will be able to develop massively starting my career with Aon. Having had the chance to speak to different colleagues who are on/have been on the graduate scheme, I get the impression that this is a fantastic place to start my career.