First Step Intern Review

Nomura organised the First Step Program very well and made all the activities thoroughly enjoyable whilst at the same time being a great insight in to the field of finance and banking. I liked that we got to work with lots of different people over the three days and also meet many different professionals from all areas of the bank.

Nomura is a very welcoming and friendly firm, with a great sense of inclusiveness for all interns and banking professionals. All the people who worked at the bank were extremely helpful during the First Step Programme and you never felt afraid to ask a question, if you had one. Also, Nomura were very clearly in explaining to all of us their values and their view that trust and kindness are the foundation of a successful company.

During all of the different activities over the three days a good amount of support and guidance was given to us. During the games, when we were working in teams, we were allowed to make our own decisions and then after the game was finished an insight in to whether our decisions were right/wrong and why we made the choices were brought in to question. I think this is a good way to learn as it meant that you felt you had a chance to think for yourself about the task in hand.

I think that the skills i learnt on the First Step Programme will be invaluable to my further education/career. I learnt a lot more about banking and finance, increasing my knowledge of the industry, which which will be beneficial to me when starting a job. Also the CV and cover letter workshop and also the mock interviews were extremely helpful in preparation for university interviews and further internship or job applications.

The insight was very well timetabled and we were made aware at the beginning of the three days what we were doing and when and were also given a copy of our schedule. This in turn meant that we always knew what was happening, where we should be and what it would involve. Overall it was very organised.

The atmosphere at Nomura is very inclusive, you never felt out of place or uncomfortable. The people on the insight with me were all very friendly and kid which meant that it was an enjoyable three days. All the business people were very friendly and willing to answer any questions, also what i really liked was that they were all very willing to talk about their experiences and how they got to where they are now. So, overall I thought the general atmosphere was fun and friendly.

Nomura were very good in teaching us a lot about the industry and also other skills such a CV writing and cover letters which will be very helpful for future job applications.

We had a lot of opportunities to speak with people from the firm (two networking lunches, junior panel, talks from members of the bank) which allowed us to get a really good insight into many different people's days at work.

The company culture is very clear from the outset at Nomura and really is enforced by everyone who works there. We also had a great talk from Jose Lourenco all about Nomura's values.

This was quite helpful as I was already interested in the financial sector, so this insight just gave me more of an idea on what I could do if I decided to work for a company like Nomura. The different roles within the bank were really good to learn about and speaking to many different business people at the networking lunches gave me a better idea as to what different options there are.

I was not paid during this experience, but as this was just an insight I was very happy not to be as I was not actually working as such Lunch was provided for us each day, with no cost

We had two networking lunches, a junior panel, a parents networking event and also all of the games we took part in were run by the employees, so we had plenty of time for networking and meeting employees.

Really good, the professionals were really willing to talk to us about their experiences and also answer all of our questions.

Yes, on our tour of the building we were shown the gym and also were told about the different sports teams and events that Nomura run for their staff.

Definitely, it was really informative about the banking sector and I learnt a lot of skills that will be of great use to me both now and in the future.