Investment Intern Review

I worked within the Investment stream with Aon and found the overall experience to be well structured and enjoyable. The early careers team kept in touch throughout, organizing talks and presentations for us. The work I did with my team was the right blend of useful tasks and opportunities to learn. Despite the virtual nature of my internship, the team made every effort to ensure I could see the result of my work further up, which made the experience very satisfying.

This was perhaps the most challenging aspect of completing an internship virtually. The team organised a welcome and leaving social for myself and this was appreciated; however, some of the team were quite distant for the duration of the internship and there was no real communication from them. This contrasted sharply with others who made an effort to engage with me. Overall I felt my work was always valued but there could have been a more structured opportunity to chat to people more experienced.

My manager was really good at ensuring I always had work to do whilst making sure I was not being given to much to deal with. Once when I checked my email at 10pm I received a message asking if I needed some support with my work, and this demonstrated the care Aon generally has for it's employees work/life balance. I also had a weekly call with my manager which was suggested by the early careers team and helped to build a more personal relationship.

This is something Aon clearly pays a lot of attention to, and this was reflected with the amount of work I typically had. Only once in the eight week period did I have to ask for something to do and the team was great at allowing me to make small contributions to projects and then see how these were carried forward. My team was very busy so as the internship went on I was given more work, but never too much and was frequently checked on to ensure I wasn't snowed under.

There was less responsibility generally, though this is more reflective of Aon's process for submitting work than the structure of the internship. There was a strict audit process in place for most work I was given, so everything was checked over several times by people more senior to myself. This did give a feeling of little responsibility however there was some tasks I was allowed to take ownership of such as an intern project and a presentation to my office.

It was a very valuable experience especially given we were not in the office. There was a number of talks and presentations put on for the interns on skills such as LinkedIn and career advice from senior people within the firm. These were all useful and well structured. From my work I learned the importance of attention to detail and working efficiently, and the work was always challenging though not impossible which I felt struck the right balance in terms of learning.

This was hard to gauge due to being a virtual intern. I could tell my office, which was a regional office of around thirty people, was extremely social and friendly during normal times. This seemed to extend from senior people right down to graduates; however, by the time I on-boarded (June) they had grown tired of virtual socials and so there wasn't much in terms of social events. Most people were very friendly individually and encouraged to be so which did reflect well and they were very understanding around my skill level.

It was very well organised. The internships were managed centrally but the work was completely delegated to your local team, which struck the right balance of organisation and specifics. There had clearly been a lot of effort put into making the experience useful and as close to an office internship as possible. Apart from some IT issues which seemed to be universally experienced across the other interns I spoke to (though often for stream specific applications such as investment orientated tools) there was no problems with organisation.

There was a lot of additional training given to us outside of our standard work. This seemed to be more than usual given the virtual nature of the internship and designed to ensure we were busy, though that was never an issue. They were useful sessions and well structured. As you progress into graduate roles, everyone I asked had a lot of good things to say about the training and study package offered, which reflected well.

Aon gave across a very positive view of working for them, especially in the Investment stream where work/life balance is often missing from other similar roles. Everyone in my team had good things to say about the training offered to grads, the room for future advancement and the work culture generally. It takes around a month after the internship to hear about a graduate role which is slower than others in the industry and a little bit frustrating.

There was an effort to encourage this, through the creation of 'peer-support' groups. Mine basically had the other 7 investment interns in it, and we had an hour-long call every week. It was good to get to know the other interns and to see what they had been getting up to in the same stream. In our intern project groups I also became friendly with the other interns, which meant that I was able to have some kind of relationship build up with other interns despite working from my bedroom.

As I was working from home, there was little cost involved. More generally, Aon has internships both in London and regional offices, so the cost will not always be significant relative to other internships. They provided a salary top up to cover the cost of setting up a workstation as well as all our IT equipment. The salary is pretty standard for an internship and is less than the starting graduate salary but seems pretty standard for internships of this type.