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I have really enjoyed my internship this summer. Living in London for the first time has been a great experience and I have really liked both the company and the industry that I have been working in. I have learnt a lot about what I want to do in the future and the steps I need to take to get there.

The people at WTW have been my favourite thing about the whole experience. Everyone has been so welcoming and I never felt like I was bothering anyone or getting in their way when I had questions to ask. The hot desking system in the office also meant that I was very rarely sat with the same people so I have had great exposure to a wide variety of people, including some very senior, who were all more than happy to give me their time to have a chat or so that I could ask them something.

I was given great support the entire time. I had weekly catch ups with my line manager and my buddy and always felt like if there was something that I wasn’t enjoying that I could always go to them. They also were willing to arrange for me to go to meet people from other teams that I was interested in so that I could find out as much as possible out about the whole company.

My first couple of weeks were very quiet to the point where occasionally I was a bit bored. I think this is to be expected though as at that point I didn’t have enough knowledge to get involved in too much work so I spent a lot of the time reading to get up to speed. Since then I have been nicely busy so I am always doing something, usually working slightly longer hours but that was because I wanted to do so to get the work done and I was regularly reminded that I didn’t need to be there after hours so I was never pressured into working longer.

I feel like I was given an ideal amount of responsibility overall. Clearly I started out only doing small tasks that were heavily supervised but this quickly grew into me running my own project during which I was entirely responsible for making sure it got done and that I asked for the support that I needed and arranged catch ups to update people on my progress.

I have learnt many skills that will be beneficial no matter what I go into in the future. Particularly I have managed to overcome my apprehension with respect to presenting. I did 4 presentations over the course of the 8 weeks in front of a range of colleagues from graduate analysts up to very senior consultants. As well as this, I was given all of the information and training slides that I needed initially to help to get my knowledge up to speed very quickly.

The atmosphere in the office is very relaxed. This is helped by the ‘dress for your day’ dress code, so you can wear whatever you want as long as you don’t have an important meeting that day. There is a good friendly atmosphere where people are happy to chat throughout the day but obviously there is also the expectation that you will get your work done as well as enjoy yourself.

The internship is been very well organised as a whole. There was clearly a very structured plan in place which has helped keep everything going. The only thing that felt slightly unorganised was that we weren’t told which teams we were in until the first day and even then I wasn’t told that I was swapping teams half way through the internship until I was casually talking to the manager of that team and he told me I’d be joining his team in a few weeks. This is a minor detail though and the rest of the internship has felt very well organised.

Over 8 weeks it’s quite hard for a firm to invest loads in you but I always felt like anything I needed they would be happy to provide. We were sent on a training course to the Reigate office which was an interesting day and I have seen the massive investment that the firm makes into their graduate Î÷¹ÏÊÓƵs which is something that I have found very attractive about WTW. In terms of time investment, everyone was willing to invest their time in you no matter how senior they were, as long as they weren't too busy obviously.

From what I have seen over the last 8 weeks I think the investment area of business at WTW is definitely somewhere I would like to work in the future, you don't find out whether you get a job until a few weeks after the end of the internship though.

Yes, there was the London Investment summer party in the first half of the internship which was a fun night. They also run free first Friday drinks after work on the first Friday of every month which gives you an opportunity to socialise with colleagues.

I was lucky during my internship as I was able to stay with a friend of a family member for heavily reduced rent but if I didn’t have this opportunity then the cost of living would have been extremely high. Socialising is also very expensive but it is London so it’s to be expected.

In London there is nightlife to suit anyone’s interests

There are opportunities like volunteering days and sports days organised by colleagues but unfortunately none of these took part while I was there.