Summer Intern (PAS) Review

Thoroughly enjoyable. Alongside the office based work we had a Corporate Social Responsibility project so we always had work to do! Was able to try my hand at a variety of different tasks!

All colleagues treated me with respect and were very approachable - they'd much rather have you ask questions than keep correcting wrong work!

At Aon you are allocated a manager and a buddy, the latter being a member of staff who is relatively new to the firm. As above, any questions I had were answered - the only stupid question is the one that goes unasked. At times I found myself approaching other members of staff other than my buddy for advice and this was not a problem either - everyone was really approachable. Often if my buddy was unable to provide me with an answer themself, they'd point me in the direction of someone who might.

The workload is variable due to the nature of the job - lots of things to do at the start of the month when new financials come out, less so approaching the end of the month as the work will become outdated by the time it is sent out. The CSR project acted as a long term task to fill the times when other work was not forthcoming - you could always do more to raise money or help your nominated charity.

I would say that I was given as much responsiblity as new graduate entrants. Every piece of work at Aon is seen by three people - a doer, a checker and a scrutineer. All the work I completed was at the first level, the same as new graduates. The best thing about this process is that you get regular feedback on every piece of work you do meaning that you progress quickly to being competent at tasks you do regularly. I was permitted to take part in client conference calls and meet clients and as such feel that I was given more than adequate responsibility for my level of experience.

I gained valuable training on presentation techniques (provided by Fecund - check out their website www.fecund.co.uk) which I feel will be highly useful. In addition, the role I was doing was the same as I hope to do when I graduate and as such the training I received will hopefully be directly applicable for my future career path.

There was a good balance - definitely a work hard play hard atmosphere. We were fully integrated into social events and people around the office seem genuinely happy at work. There are plenty of activities to get involved with to get to know those in your office!

On the whole, the training and work experience was excellent.The only real issue was the IT provision. Some issues remained unresolved until the last week of the internship and whenever we wanted to work on a new client, we had to request access to client files which often took several days to process. I hope that in the future, those responsible for the scheme's management ask managers to request access for new interns to clients they are likely to work on prior to their arrival in the office. This way intens won't be prohibted from doing work they have time to do by lack of access to the necessary files.

We were provided with a 3 day training session in London at the start of the internship. This was very valuable and the remainder of the training given was in office as we did tasks. If errors were made on a piece of work, these were picked up by those checking the work and fed back to me so that I could improve for next time. The only way I could imagine the firm improving on its training (for the actuarial stream) would be to give targeted training towards CT1 - this exam can be taken as a non-member of the Institute/Faculty of Actuaries and giving interns training towards it would enable them to pass this exam in advance of arrival/early after arrival if they go on to be hired as graduates at the firm.

I don't know yet! We find out in the last week of the internship whether we will be offered a position for after graduation. We were informed over 50% of interns were converted to graduate entrants last year.

We had an interns lunch in the first full week in office. We also socialised together on some evenings.

I was living at home, however accommodation is not too expensive in Leeds, nor is the cost of buying food or going out to pobs.

The centre of Leeds is a fantastic place to go out after work. We often went to local pubs for food and drink, went to a local thai restaurants. Some of the local bars offer discounts to Aon employees.

There were many activities run as part of various interns CSR projects, as well as regular socials. There was a summer BBQ, a pub quiz, a squash ladder, several nights out and a treasure hunt in the 9 weeks of my internship.