Business Change and Technology Intern Review

I would say that overall I very much enjoyed my time here. It took a couple of weeks to settle in but when I did I found myself in an incredibly friendly team that I think reflected the positive working culture at Standard Life. I was working on a technically complex task which was very excel-heavy, and it might have been nice to have had some other tasks to provide some diversity, but it was nice to deliver a full and business-important piece of work at the end of the internship. I also enjoyed being part of the intern community.

The team was small and very welcoming to interns, giving us very important work from the start. It never felt like an issue at all asking questions or asking to shadow people in other business areas that seemed interesting. By the end of the internship, it was almost as if I was a genuine part of the team and had been here for years, and I will be sad to say goodbye to the rest of the team! The friendly and welcoming environment seem to be company standard, based on what I have heard from other interns.

The team gauged support levels very well. The first few weeks were more of an overview, as you would expect, so there were many introductions to acronyms and business processes. As soon as the team felt I was ready to begin properly, which was very early on, I was allowed to roam free with my main project with limited supervision from this point on. This was the perfect approach, as I was allowed to learn by doing which really suits my learning style and allowed me to flourish - by the end of the 10 weeks, I was the expert on my project and ended up giving others advice! Guidance was always available if I had needed it, and felt totally accessible.

There were definitely a lot of slow days - I had one main project, involving a lot of Excel work, and when I ran into the occassional roadblock it sometimes took a while to resolve. However, I was generally very busy between my work and the other internship activities. When my work gathered momentum I was especially busy, and decided to stay late and at weekends on occassion. Overall my workload was very inconsistent, but the busy days did outweigh the quiet days, especially towards the end as deadlines approached.

Given that I was an intern, there was clearly an upper limit on the amount of responsibility I could have been given. I wasn't in a position where I felt I could particularly innovate or make any breakthroughs in the business processes, which is admittedly one of the pitfalls of any large corporation such as this. Within these limitations, though, I was given a large amount of responsibility - as previously mentioned, I had complete ownership over my large task, which was itself very important to our business area.

My degree is IT based, so it was helpful to apply these in a work environment. The most important skills I learnt during the internship were probably soft skills such as time management and working in a team, which are definitely transferable to my degree studies and beyond. However, I do not hugely feel like I have developed my IT skills in any major way. The technology used here is definitely not cutting edge, and a lot of the work I did concerned looking at and optimising quite old processes.

As in my team, the atmosphere in my office was jovial, friendly and welcoming from the start. People from completely different teams were very keen to introduce themselves and offer their help in any way they could, which was incredibly useful as well as surprising given my intern status. There were team social events throughout the internship, which really helped to cement relationships within the team. There were also fun events in the office fairly often - a cooked breakfast one morning, doughnuts one lunch time and strawberries and cream provided while we watched Wimbledon on the big screens in the office!

The overall placement was very well organised. The balance between internship activities, such as the Strengthsfinder session and a charity day, and our actual work, was very well maintained. The organised accommodation was excellent despite the fact I was unfortunately not staying there. My actual work was very well set up by my team; it would have been so easy for them to give me some straightforward 'business as usual' tasks that did not have a significant business impact, but they did a great job in giving me important work and genuine responsibility.

I felt like a valued member of the company. We were given a meeting with the CEO and COO despite their very busy schedules. Our whole department also took a lot of time out to show us how their operations worked, which was particularly impressive as the department was undergoing large scale change for the duration of our internship. The interview process was very slick and I felt like I knew exactly where I stood at all points in the process, which was great. Although I was not staying at the accommodation with the other interns, I have heard from those who have that this was a great initiative by Standard Life and the time I did spend there was a lot of fun.

I would recommend the company in general because of its ethos; it is a friendly place to work, there is a nice culture and I have really enjoyed my time here. However, for me personally my future employment prospects are limited because I want to work with more cutting edge technology. The IT processes at Standard Life are very stale I would say, and although this makes them easy to work with for the less technical people it means that I was limited in my development and would seek to learn more elsewhere in the future.

There was a great social scene. All the other interns were very friendly - I don't know if that was just fortunate or if it has something to do with the friendliness and inclusion encouraged in Standard Life's approach to everything. I have made some really good friends and look forward to keeping in touch with them long past the end of the internship! The one drawback was that the interns in the shared accommodation were a lot more of a community, and it would have been nice to be there as well, but I understand that there are cost limitations on Standard Life barring them from offering this to local interns. Despite this I still felt very welcome to the intern events.

I live in Edinburgh for university anyway so I am used to paying to live and socialise in the area. It is a relatively cheap city to live in, certainly a far cry from London! Free apartments makes the cost of living substantially lower, and seemed very popular among the interns staying there.

Nightlife was excellent. As I have said, the intern community was very open and friendly and there were a lot of nights out to go along with this. There was no pressure to go out with interns when I was spending nights with uni friends, which was welcome. The Fringe was a lot of fun with all the other interns and although I am used to the buzz, it was nice to live through this for the summer with the other interns.

Absolutely loads of opportunities! Especially during the festival when there was a lot more going on. At least two social intern events per week. Extra-curricular activities within Standard Life were also available, such as the tennis club, but I decided not to take these opportunities.