I learned tremendously from my project. It gave me insights into the compensation philosophy a diverse set of companies and its impacts the basic constituents of executive pay. Furthermore, I got introduced to the literature related to the subject that helped in developing an understanding of the instruments used for delivering incentives and the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of Pay for Performance. For things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn them by doing them, the statement encapsulates my learning style for most of my academic life. But working on a project, I initially knew little about, facilitated experiential learning or learning by doing. I realized that I passed through all the four stages of Kolb learning cycle while working on the project making the process especially fruitful and exciting.
A consulting firm is a repository of knowledge, knowledge which is intrinsically embedded in its consultants and as a consequence, I learned most through interactions with my mentors and other employees in the organisation. Indra Nooyi has famously said, “Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues - you grow so much” and this true for the amount of learning I got in the limited time period.
One thing that differentiates Aon for other companies is the quality of mentorship one gets and this in part reflects the value of ‘empowering results’ which Aon stands for. Mentoring and facilitating learning is core culture at Aon where I could approach anyone with my queries and receive a positive response. Throughout the two months, I was under the aegis and guidance of my mentors who made all possible attempts to guide me through the nuanced labyrinth of executive pay and help me learn most from my project. They followed the Socratic approach of using the discussion to facilitate learning and problem-solving. I was never told what to do but the help and guidance were just a call away at all times.
Learning was not limited to the project each interaction, seminar or conference had unique value to add. During the induction process, one of the senior executives shared a wonderful piece of advice which would stay with me through my life. He asked us, the group of summer interns, to not get deterred from our projects in the first twenty hours of working on them. He added that frustration is a sign that the brain is in the process of acquiring a new skill and the first 20 hours are the most crucial, crossing this threshold gives the mind the time to understand and learn the skill. This advice helped me deal with trials and tribulations of my project.
Internship at Aon Consulting equipped with a lot of crucial skills which are nonnegotiable while working in a business environment. Be it honing my data collection and analysis skills to report writing skills and analytical skills, I feel I have grown both as a person and as a professional after my two-month internship at Aon.
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