Analyst Review

In general, the placement was very enjoyable. My team was a vibrant bunch, with a real mix of asset management and finance experts and junior bankers. The work was relatively straightforward but crucially varied, giving me a broader insight into the business area, as well as ensuring I was not stuck spending 12 months doing work that was not that rewarding. Being based in the City of London was also brilliant.

I felt like a valued member of the team from day one, doing the same work as other permanent team members, and went to all of my team's meetings, and thus being exposed to some very high-level projects. I was invited to all team events and always introduced by teammates, so I did not feel out-of-place.

I was assigned to a line manager as well as a day-to-day mentor, both of whom I had regular meetings with (to assess my progress and happiness). I was given regular feedback in my monthly 1-2-1's as well as semi-annual scored feedback. The system Lloyds has is excellent; at the start of the year I was given a set of targets and ways to achieve this. This made it easy to track and observe my progress.

This was varied purely because of my team's area in the Bank (which was running down). As such, the amount of work was always reducing but in general, I always had something to do. When I moved teams for the last couple of months, I was full-on and the days flew by!

When I was in my first team, I was a crucial member given responsibility equal to that of a junior analyst. When I left on temp leave to a different team, I was completing work that associate directors would have been completing. This mix was excellent and gave me a deeper insight to the work employees complete.

I am completing an Economics and Finance degree, and so a placement in Banking has limited relevance. I did receive some excellent Lloyds training in various disciplines that was very useful albeit not always relevant to my degree, but to further my skill set.

During my placement, my team and I moved offices in London. The first office was purely my team and others in the area, which was very relaxed and you could get to know everyone in that floor area. In the second office, we were joined by a lot more teams and the office was much busier, and as such a little less personal.

Excellent; I was given clear objectives and targets which stated what my day-to-day responsibilities were. Regular 1-2-1's assessed my progress on this.

I attended a Lloyds training scheme (free of charge for me) as well as having meetings with team mates to run me through banking topics and the business area, so I had the opportunity to learn more and more about the banking sector and Lloyds.

I was offered all of the Commercial Banking Graduate Schemes and a route into them, but I decided that the work and schemes were not for me.

In our second office, all of the placement students in my department were in the same office and so we saw each other every day and socialised on a number of occasions. A group of us went to Portugal for a long weekend too!

London is London! Going out was expensive but I lived in Kent.

Again, London is London!

Lloyds regularly encouraged team and dept. socialising, formal and informal, and charity events. There was something going on every other week or so.