Working as a HR Intern in London!

I have been working this summer in London as a Talent intern on the People team at Signal AI. The contribution I have been making to the People team at my host company, Signal AI, would be helping the Talent manager by helping with the EVP refreshing project and the hiring process. I am happy to help him by taking interviews and heading hiring processes for assigned roles as well as working on refreshing our EVP (Employee Value Proposition).

Essentially, EVP refers to the culture, benefits, and rewards a company offers to its employees in exchange for work, skills, and contributions. It includes everything from company culture to career development to work environment and just overall employee experience. I have researched and collected data on how our competitor companies (those that use the same technology and are B2B and Saas in the London and Lisbon area (as we also have an office in Lisbon). With this data, I compare it to Signal’s statistics from company reviews on Glassdoor and Comparably, structures of job descriptions, salaries and benefits offered, and values. All of this information I’ve collected has helped me see what I needed to fix about our job description postings so that we can attract more potential candidates and make Signal a company people want to work for. I’ve also interviewed employees at Signal and presented my findings to the Head of People so that they understand what the internal perception of their EVP is; this helps us understand what we need to fix/are doing right. 

As for the hiring process, my boss has left me in charge of filling the position for Client Services Executive in our Lisbon office. I’ve conducted interviews with candidates, reviewed CVs, emailed candidates updates and configured communications between them and the hiring managers at the Lisbon office, and have met with internal stakeholders and managers to see what they want from a candidate. I’ve grown more confident in my people skills as I continue to hire candidates through small talk and interviewing. By conducting the hiring process for this position, my boss can focus on hiring for other positions which I often help out with from time to time (usually filtering applications and conducting a few interviews).

         It makes me happy that I am able to help out with the hiring process and EVP project as I feel useful and important to the team. I was worried that as an intern I would be doing busy work, but I am actually learning more than I thought I would from the tasks my boss has given me. As a result, I have learned that there is more to Talent than simply interviewing people and saying “yes” or “no.” I am helping my company reach their 2026 goals of having a rebranded EVP that attracts more candidates and of having all of their current open positions filled before the end of the year, and I will continue working hard to help make sure all positions get filled. 

In terms of company culture, I have joined my coworkers for drinks after work at local pubs as is customary in London. While this blog was more HR-heavy, if you are interested in working with people, this could be a great career and studying abroad is a great opportunity to see if it best fits you.