Assistant Manager Review

Overall, the internship has been a positive experience. I was allocated my first choice stream, in my first choice location. My internship was in finance, and the team I was in worked quite closely to the business and stakeholders. The first couple of weeks was slow, because I was still being brought up to speed on things and didn't have full access to everything in the system, but once that was completed I was gradually given more responsibilities and tasks. My team was very supportive and were happy to answer my questions, and I felt like I was welcomed in straight away. As someone with no financial background (my degree is in a STEM subject), I was eased into the placement by my team with introductory packs and conversations. I also picked up jargon and processes along the way through exposure. The work culture was very positive as well, with work-life balance and empowerment being valued here, though I have heard this differs between divisions/teams.

My team was very big on valuing each other and making sure that everyone's work was recognised - we even had a "Thank You" cupboard filled with chocolate, sweets and small bottles of alcohol if someone wanted to say thanks to you for helping on a piece of work! I was happy that my colleagues would come to me to ask for help or assistance with their work, and gave me ownership on pieces. I had weekly 1-to-1 catch ups with my line manager who would give me feedback on my performance so far, and discuss what other work I can get involved in.

In general, I was given support to learn the basics of the team, their function and some of the jargon. My first week was mostly me given packs of information on the team, and I had 1 to 1 meetings which each member of the team as an introduction, to learn their role and they would explain some things to me. However, I did feel like I could have had more support in the first few days as I was just given a bunch of documents to read which you can only learn so much from. This is mostly just a minor nitpick as thereafter, I was able to sit with various members of the team and they taught me some processes and explained it quite thoroughly to me, which I was then able to take away and try to do it on my own.

I had busy days and some not so busy days. The first two weeks were very slow and I found myself just looking on the group website a lot. However, after settling in I had more to do and more responsibilities. The days I were busy were to do with pulling together high level packs for regular meetings. On the days I were not busy, I still had things to do but they were mainly adhoc stuff. Once I felt comfortable in the team, I would start volunteering myself for things or telling people if I had capacity to help. I worked the standard 9 to 5, some days I left a little earlier other days I chose to stay back to finish up work.

I was responsible for sending out high level packs and data to stakeholders and senior managers - which was quite scary at first! Especially as that meant I was first point of contact if someone didn't understand anything on it. I had ownership of a few projects which I presented to the head of my team and had to seek sign off for as it was part of a change in an important part of a process.

Hard skills: Excel. My exposure to Excel had been limited so far, so I was able to pick up new Excel skills/shortcuts/functions which will be handy for the future. It wasn't a huge amount of Excel, and my use of it was quite basic, but still useful. I would say most of the skills I have developed has been soft skills: Communication (email, phone, conversational) - especially learning professional etiquette. Attention to detail - this is an underrated skill, and I realised I wasn't as good at this as I thought, but I've picked up on how to be attentive to small details which is very important especially when creating packs for senior levels. Things like taking notes when someone is explaning a process to you was something I was able to develop (even though it seems small, having bad notes can really set you back).

My team was very fun, joked around with each other and socialable in the office, but it was rare to do anything out of the office/working hours. The surrounding teams in my office/floor was a lot more quite though, so I know my experience is not the standard. Also speaking to the grads on my team who has had rotations they have also said their experiences in office atmospheres does vary. The whole office was pretty standard 9-5, it was very rare to see anyone in before 8.30 or stay beyond 6 pm (the floor is quite empty outside of these hours), so work life balance is very good.

The internship has capacity to improve in terms of organisation, especially in terms of IT like laptops, logins etc. My line manager was given guidelines on things she needed to do with me e.g. ensure we have weekly meetings, explain the balance scorecard, have an interview with me in week 8 which was helpful. LBG Emerging Talent also had a few webinars in the first half of the internship - some were useful, some were not.

As this was a 10 week placement, there probably wasn't much scope to invest in me in terms of structured training plans, but I was given free reign to organise my own shadowing within the business. In my experience, you do need to take initiative for creating opprtunities for development and need to be quite assertive on having it. My team also gave an Excel training session to myself, and the two grads on the team. As mentioned before, the emerging talent hosted a series of Webinars for "long distance" development, which was akin to "motivational presentations". We also had the opportunity to network with other interns, with some interns giving presentations on the work they had done so far.

Very appealing as I feel like their graduate scheme is very structured (I have spoken to many grads on this, and their experience has been overall positive), and the culture here is positive and inclusive.

Unless you were living in halls with them it wasn't social if you're an intern living at home.

Normal London prices, spent around £6-8 a day on food/coffee, but of course you can cut this by bringing in your own food.

Good, we're in London!

No