Summer student Review

Actuarial Summer student. Role includes group project, individual project and presentation, client team meetings, attending training sessions, carrying out calculations, secretarial work, actuarial reports. Need to use Excel and various other Hymans-specific sites. You also needed to keep a log of what you had learnt and the skills developed over the course of the internship. In the first few weeks there were also several training sessions - for example on Excel, DB and DC pensions and valuing liabilities.

I have definitely developed several skills including team-work, resilience, collaboration and presentation skills. I have also developed several more technical skills - for example my proficiency in excel has increased and I have learnt to carry out other actuarial skills such as transfer value calculations. I have learnt how to use other systems such as outlook, Skype and Microsoft teams. My organisational and planning skills have also improved as I was responsible for keeping on top of a busy workload and various different projects. During my internship I kept a log of the skills I had learnt and developed.

Yes I believe I was given many responsibilities during my internship such as developing a personal project and seeing this through whole project to result in a presentation. This project was then going to be used and implement over the next few months to help the business unit. I was also responsible for calculations for clients, for sending these to the checker, for creating an audit trail and then sending the quotes to the client. There was also an intern group group which required the collating of information and then checking information collated by other interns. I also needed to chair and prepare for a team meeting and organise a social at the end of my internship.

Thoroughly my internship I received a high level of help and guidance. There were several people assigned to me (buddy, people manager, team leader, project leader) who checked in regularly on my development. These people ensured that I was being given enough client work and was developing my personal projects well. I also found it easy to ask questions and for extra help and support from my client teams due to the friendly and supportive culture at Hymans

I found the culture very friendly and supportive - I found it easy to ask for questions/explanations. Despite mainly a virtual internship I still received a lot of support and regular catch-ups with people I was working with. I did go into the office on a few occasions and attended a few work social - I thought Hymans was a very social place to work based on this. I also enjoyed the variety of people that worked at Hymans and being able to work with people of all levels.

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship as I think I developed many personal skills. I had the opportunity to be involved in a lot of different work with various different people. I also found the internship quite social and enjoyed getting to know the other interns and the graduates in the year above me. I also enjoyed being able to work on my own project and to have the opportunity to present the work that I had done at the end of the internship.

Yes

I would make sure that you research the company and know their values. It is also important to reflect on what makes you a suitable candidate. Also make sure that you understand the basics of the business unit that you’re applying for - e.g the difference between DC and DB pensions if you’re applying for actuarial. I found that I was asked a lot of ‘give a time when …’ questions so make sure you have thought of various different experiences that could be relevant for these questions (e.g a time when team work was important, a time when you were flexible etc).