Associate Relationship Manager Review

My internship far exceeded my expectations. Where I had thought I would be given mundane admin tasks on a daily basis, I was loaded with real value adding work from the very beginning. It was challenging but a great learning tool and I have been able to gain an enormous amount of knowledge from my short 10 weeks with the Group.

Feeling valued comes from building respect and this most definitely took time to develop (as I would have thought) over the course of the programme. Being successful and delivering on small tasks at first, gave way to bigger opportunities where I was able to undertake work where I held more responsibility. By way of nature, I feel as though my colleagues valued my effort and my desire to help the team.

Whilst I did not interact my line manager as often I had expected to, he made sure to have weekly catch-up's where he always asked if there was anything he could do for me. My mentor was extremely supportive and encouraged me to network, spend time doing work with other teams/departments, and thus build both my brand and knowledge.

Again, this grew with time. At the beginning when I was given simple tasks, it was difficult to stay busy due to the short time it took to complete them and the time restrictions for my colleagues to find me other work. After the initial two weeks, however, I became involved with projects and started to organise my own time in other departments/teams, therefore became overly busy!

As I have mentioned, I was given big responsibility with several projects. One included winning new business and involved front line contact with clients and discussions on several products we could offer them. It was a challenge to reach the level where I was comfortable to talk to large clients on such technical terms and was the highlight of my experience.

Going into my last year I feel confident in knowing where I'd like to go as for my career once I have graduated. I have learnt a great deal not only about the banking industry but how businesses function financially and strategically. I now know I am fully able to secure wins for the Group and provide excellent customer service in the future.

Extremely friendly. Everyone was welcoming and very keen to get to know me, my interests, and introduce themselves as well as what they do. I very much appreciate that everyone was happy to take time aside to teach me and involve me in the team. Social events also came often and were a great way to interact with seniors across the team.

I can say the internship was 'well' organised in its basic sense. You had a line manager, mentor, buddy, role....However, specific tasks were not defined and every day was different. While some may find its unstructured nature unbearable, for me it was the real win. Every day really was different which meant every day I was approaching something new and exciting. This was of course different for every intern and I know many which had agreed tasks/projects from their first day or even prior to that through e-mail contact with their managers.

I was encouraged to attend events and conferences where personal development was widely discussed and was interesting to hear about. As I have previously mentioned, my mentor played a large role in encouraging me to absorb as much learning from the 10 weeks as possible, to which everyone I approached immediately agreed to. In my biggest project we even conducted a progress chart with targets and actuals measured. Our internship was based on a balanced scorecard which allowed you to set many targets in 4 key areas (risk, customer, business, personal) and every week a meeting with your manager kept track of your progress and discussed what you had discovered about your strengths, weaknesses, room for opportunity and growth. Furthermore, we had weekly intern webinars throughout the internship.

Very. The graduate programme is fantastic and allows you to move across the whole country and assist different teams and departments. The culture is simply one of a kind in regards to the whole of the banking sector and it is evident just how much the Group invests in its people and encourages their development and aids their career pathway.

We all lived together as interns and since there were many of us we always interacted outside of work and became good friends. Furthermore, we had a graduate social rep in our office who also organised events for interns and graduates.

Great! When you leave London everything seems affordable! Our accommodation was fully paid and arranged for by Lloyds Banking Group.

It was vibrant, quirky and cool. A place for everyone's taste.

Yes, plenty. Whether its personal (socialising, travelling etc.) or even charity work with colleagues.