Risk intern Review

I really enjoyed my placement, particularly because of the people I worked with. It was a great office atmosphere and I got work with lots of different people throughout my placement. I felt as though I was treated well as an intern and given a lot of responsibility, which I didn’t expect.

My colleagues were extremely supportive, always making time to help me out and answer any questions I had. They also tried to help me develop by inviting me to sit in on their meetings and join in on some of their projects which would’ve been easier for them if they hadn’t.

I quite like to have freedom in the way that I work, and my manager noticed this straight away. He let me go out and find out about the different teams and decide what I was most interested in then he would organise with managers so I could get some exposure. For each of the teams I worked in I felt supported by my colleagues and still had my manager to guide me.

As I was working in several teams, my workload varied dramatically. There were a lot of days that work was non-stop and I worked long hours but other days where I had to be proactive finding myself work to keep me busy. If I ever had too much to do, I felt comfortable telling my manager (or whoever was asking me to complete the work).

I was given so much responsibility for an intern. There was one point where I was working directly for a global head of a division and there was nobody else in the team (as it was a new position), so I was relied on a lot. There were a different project when I set up a team of four to help me complete it and had to delegate tasks to other individuals. I felt grateful that they believed I could cope with the responsibility.

To be honest, my placement developed my life skills more than anything; although I did learn technical skills such as Excel and it improved my knowledge in the banking skills. I now am much more confident and can communicate better. I find it easier to organise my workload and can use my initiative rather than just follow instructions.

Some teams were more social than others but overall it was a nice atmosphere. They sometimes brought drinks trolleys into the office so everyone stopped working to have a drink and a chat. This was good so we could talk to people who we saw everyday but had no idea what they did. Many senior people got involved too which was good. Unfortunately the interns weren’t particular social in my area because many went to the same university and I never interacted with any on my day to day work. Other interns within the bank were more social though (could have just been my year).

I don’t think the placement was set up particularly well. We didn’t get much training and the structure of it was solely down to whichever team we were placed in (which wasn’t even organised until the week before we started). I was fortunate, but other interns were put in teams where they were treated as a permanent member of staff, running reports and completing tasks without really understanding what they were doing, why they were doing it and how it impacted the business. There didn’t seem to be sufficient monitoring by HR of these interns.

Most of training and development was completing online tests or reading policies and guidance documents. This could have been because teams were understaffed and so didn’t have the capacity to teach us. For some programmes, interns were sponsored to take professional qualifications. I asked if I could take some but they denied my application because of funding. The online tutorials were useful.

Out of 20 risk interns, in the year before only 2 were offered graduate positions. In the area of Compliance and Operational Risk there were only 3 graduates, so there aren’t many opportunities. However, more recently there has been a greater investment in the graduate scheme and so it should improve. Also if you work well for your team, lots of interns can be offered full time permanent roles for them.

Answered earlier, but not much outside of the office.

It was right in central London so if you wanted to live close rent and the cost of living was ridiculously expensive. Meals and drinks in the surrounding areas were also pretty expensive but it balanced out because of the wage. I lived at home and commuted which still cost over £6,000 for the annual train ticket but overall I saved. As an intern though, often colleagues paid because they earn more!

Generally people would go for drinks straight after work around 6ish and nights would end around 10/11 so people could get home before the last trains. We would go to bars much more often than clubs partly because we were in our work clothes and had our work stuff but also because there weren’t many clubs about.

I got involved in loads outside of my work. There were many firm-wide events which guest speakers (such as Lewis Hamilton) and also organised by different networks. For example, there were networks for women, LGBT, families and different diversities. I joined the committee of the risk committee and one of the other networks and I got to organise events for which anyone could attend. There also were numerous opportunities to volunteer and raise money for charities.