Intern Review

My internship was a fantastic experience to learn and meet a variety of new people. I had a great work life balance at my internship and played touch rugby every Tuesday (organised by the bank) with other interns which was such good fun and a real opportunity to catch up with other interns from different departments.

My colleagues made me feel like I was part of the team from day 1. I gave a presentation half way through my internship in one of the monthly catch up meetings and was surprised to be approached by a majority of my team congratulating me on my good job afterwards. My birthday also coincided with my internship and so I organised a birthday lunch with my team All but one of my team mates made the effort to attend and I also received a lovely birthday card, highlighting how supportive my team were.

Support from my peers was excellent during my internship. My team members were very approachable and were always willing to offer their time to explain what they were working on and answer any questions I may have. I received the most amount of support from the associates I was working with as I was in discussion with them every day. Prior to the presentation I gave half way through my internship one of my team members offered to run through the presentation with me and give me some practice questions and feedback which I really valued. I had less support from my line manager but this was due to his busy schedule and I felt more comfortable asking the more specific questions to my colleagues who I was working with.

My work load highly fluctuated on a daily basis. This was due to the nature of the job as much of the time I was waiting on information requests from the business to return back to me or prepping for an upcoming meeting. Much of the work is centred around the hours that other associates are working. As Bank of America Merrill Lynch is an American firm, the day generally got busier towards 1pm when the American's entered the office and we were able to schedule meetings with them.

The more I worked on an audit the more responsibility I was given. Initially I was attending meetings and writing meeting notes on what was discussed and further towards the end of the internship I was given the responsibility to independently contacting MD's and other high level management for information via email and telephone. I was then inputting this data into an excel spreadsheet which I was responsible for monitoring and updating.

The majority of work done by audit is project based and involves contacting a high number of people during this process. Academically I feel the content of what I was doing on a day to day basis is not a high level of relevance to my degree, however I have really improved my skills involving teamwork, multitasking and presenting.

Onboarding and first week of training was organised excellently however when I reached my desk I found the organisation of my team expecting me was fairly poor. I did not receive access to my own computer until three days into my internship and access to the system I was using until the second week, which I think should be reviewed as the team had 6 months notice to when I would be joining. After this small hiccup, the rest of the internship was very well organised with my buddy and manager setting up weekly catch up meetings to monitor my progress which was a great opportunity for discussing feedback and voicing any concerns I may of had.

HR set up a weekly learning session where associates would speak to the interns about their line of business, a project they were working on or something more general such as a commentary on the macroeconomic environment. This was a fantastic opportunity to hear from people across the bank and follow up with any questions we had. This definitely gave much more breadth of learning during our internship and I found it of high value. Our first week of training was useful to meet everyone however it was very products driven and not very relevant to the understanding of the audit process, however when I arrived on my desk this was clarified and I was given more specialised training from my colleagues.

High- I was lucky to live at home which reduced the cost of living substantially. However it can be very expensive to rent around the St Pauls area so if you can rent with a friend I would recommend this to cut costs. I found the canteen to be quite expensive so opted to eat out more, generally lunches were around £5. There are plenty of great bars and restaurants around St Pauls. We had our end of internship party at Madison's rooftop bar which was a real luxury but of course there are also cheaper alternatives for food and drink.

London is a great city with many bars and clubs. St Pauls is very central and only a few tube stops away from Oxford street, Kings cross, Shoreditch and Camden town, so there is great opportunities to go out if that is what you wish to do. The audit team have Thursday night drinks every week after work so there is always opportunity to go out from that!

Yes plenty- we had a weekly mixed touch rugby training session for the interns which was great fun. You don't have to be good at rugby to start- I had never held a rugby ball before but it was a fantastic way to grow your friendship with other interns as often during the day you do not get to see very many of them. We also had a pizza making class hosted by HR one evening for the interns; this again was so much fun! We also were fortunate enough to have networking drinks at the British Museum where we had a private viewing of one of the exhibitions being displayed. These events were only for interns so there was no pressure to perform, they were simply to enjoy ourselves and an opportunity to meet others in a relaxed environment, which I really valued.