Summer student Review

Working at Barnett Waddingham for the last eight weeks has been a pleasure. In such a short period of time, I have felt fully integrated as a valued member of the team, both in terms of the opportunities to become involved in a variety of client work and the effort made by the rest of the Bromsgrove office to welcome me and include me in the social side of life at BW.

I felt very valued by my colleagues, both in their willingness to involve me in client work which they needed help with and also in how they ensured I felt like one of the team through social activities such as pub trips, team socials (eg go karting) and the BW football tournament.

In addition to my line manager, I was given two mentors and two supervisors who were to be my first ports of call if I had any questions, one of each from both of the actuarial consulting and investment consulting teams. All four were fantastic sources of support and guidance throughout my time here and appeared to take a genuine interest in me and my progress. They also responded well to my requests for specific areas of work I would like to get involved in.

Initially, once my first set of training sessions had concluded, I felt slightly under-occupied, but by the middle of the internship the team had provided a lot more opportunities for me to get involved in client work, such as actuarial reports, investment monitoring reports, line checks for valuations etc. Having a set of projects to work on between client work also helped to fill the quieter periods

I was surprised by the level of responsibility I was given in terms of doing client-facing work immediately and getting very stuck in and it helped me feel valued as part of a team. However, all your work is checked before it is sent out to a client so that any mistakes are picked up on and you can receive feedback

I have developed so many transferable skills: - oral presentation skills - we had to give three over the course of the eight weeks - time management between getting through client work but also finishing the summer student projects - self-motivation - technical and analytical skills specific to the actuarial profession Some of the more technical skills won't be applicable to my degree, but you learn so many life skills which will be useful at university and beyond.

The atmosphere was fantastic, particularly on the actuarial consulting side where the team was slightly bigger and tended to be in the office more often. There was lots of friendly banter and I got to know people very quickly by doing the sandwich run on a Friday morning and being invited to team lunches and qualification drinks in my first week.

I liked having a two day induction in Leeds so that I could have some central training, visit a different city and meet interns in other offices. There was a well structured set of training sessions at the beginning of the internship, and the deadlines for projects were spread out enough to make it easy to find the time to work on them all whilst spending most of the time doing client facing work.

There was a very significant amount of training sessions in the Bromsgrove office across the first two weeks, as well as a two day induction in Leeds for the interns from every office where they provided our accommodation and a trip to Pizza Express! Therefore, it felt like there was a good investment in me with respect of personal development.

If given the opportunity, I would love to work for BW again in the future. Future employment prospects with them are also improved by the fact that they are moving to a new office in 2020, so are clearly a firm that are growing and have a bright future ahead.

I was the only summer student in my office, but enjoyed the social aspects of the national induction with other interns in Leeds and have since stayed in touch with a few. The social scene among the newer graduates was very good and I felt welcomed into that group throughout my time there.

Due to the location of the office, I was able to live in my university accommodation throughout my placement, so only incurred travel and food costs, both of which were reasonable.

The office is in quite an isolated location and Bromgrove, the nearest town to the office, only had one main high street with a few pubs, However, we still enjoyed going here for qualification drinks whilst I was there. Also, the transport network is quite good so we were able to get on the train to Birmingham city centre where the nightlife is very good.

Throughout my time here, there were lots of activities outside of work: - trips to the pub on most Fridays - a bowling social which I organised - drinks for someone's qualification - a go-karting social with the investment team - the BW football tournament - a Pensions & Pizza networking event