Intern Business Change and Technology Review

I really enjoyed my time at Standard Life--I was a couple of projects (mainly analysis-related) and was able to take these in my own direction. I was given responsibility for reporting on my results back to third-parties. Everyone I met was extremely friendly and helpful and it seems like a great place to work. Overall, the ten weeks were really informative and really broadened my horizons. My work was engaging, and so each day went past quickly.

My colleagues seemed very pleased to have me on their team and said as much! They all took their time to explain things to me when I had questions and were very interested in my background / future plans. They also trusted me to report on work I had done and made an effort to include me in team meetings. They even invited me along to their team lunch which was a few days after my internship--I couldn't have asked for better colleauges really.

I worked with my manager and my coach so received frequent indirect feedback and direct guidance from them. Especially in the first few days when I had no idea what anything meant, my coach was very patient and kind. We also attended meetings every Friday with the other interns and graduates--so I felt like I had access to a very supportive network. All the interns were assigned graduate buddies--and mine was also on-hand to answer my questions.

I was able to keep myself very busy--partly this is because I decided to automate some of the analysis I was doing and so learning vba took me some time. I made a lot of mistakes but I learnt from them and I felt like I had a nice balance between having an incentive to get things done and having room to try new things and experiment. I was given three main "projects" to work on so had quite a lot of variety in my time there.

I was trusted to report back on my results to third-parties, which I felt was quite a lot of responsibility. I was also trusted to work independently--my manager knew what I was working on but I wasn't asked to account for every minute of my time. Generally, if I made statements, then they were accepted as given.

I don't think the skills I have gained will particularly serve me well in my degree, but I think they will be very useful for life thereafter. I have gone from having very little excel knowledge to being at beginner level in vba and being very comfortable around pivot tables. I am also more confident and have learnt that I could enjoy a career in IT, which I would never have believed a few months ago. I also have a much clearer idea of what constitutes "analysis" in a business.

Everyone was very friendly and seemed to enjoy their job. People worked hard but were also happy to take time to chat--it had a really nice balance.

Overall I think things were very well-organized--especially the welcome days and the presentations. They made sure we had a decent-sized audience for our end-of-internship presentations and organized a small celebration afterwards. There were some sessions which provided less relevant information--but on the whole I think HR did a great job! From a technical point of view there were no problems at all--we all had email accounts and sign-ons set up by our first day.

I feel like staff at all levels invested a lot of their time in explaining things to me--and I'm very grateful for that! I met with senior managers and developers and many went above and beyond to communicate to me what their job was and what I should know about the role. I also received a strenghs finder assessment, which might serve me well in the future.

Very appealing--I hope to be offered a job.

Yes--people met up during the week and at weekends. The shared accommodation (provided for free if you lived far enough away from Edinburgh) meant that it was very easy to meet up.

Accommodation being free made a huge difference--otherwise Edinburgh is fairly expensive but still cheap by London standards.

Good (I've heard).

There was a Charity Challenge Day and we could take part in some network events...mainly I think the interns organized things to do themselves. Standard Life funded a night out for us though, which was generous!