Summer Intern Review

The 9-week internship program is absolutely a valuable and memorable experience to people who want to join in investment banks. I am exposed to different business functions through trainings and speakers events, which opens different career paths for me and gives me a better understanding of the whole company.

My team is very supportive and friendly. At the beginning of my internship, I knew very little about the business that my team does and was very nervous. However, my team did not delegate any tough work to me in the first week but gave me lots of reading materials and case studies to make myself more familiar with the products and services we provide. Whenever they asked me to do something, they were always patient and willing to guide me through step by step.

My buddy and line manager are very helpful and supportive. On the first day of the internship, my buddy gave me all the information I need including how to order dinner online, book taxi, contact presentation team, etc.. He is extremely friendly and willing to get me involved in transactions as much as possible. At the same time, he was not just delegating a task to me, he also briefed me about the background of the transaction and explained why we need to do it. My line manager supported me in a different way. She always give me feedback on work, suggestions and good advises in general. When I made some mistakes, she was always patient and willing to give me a second chance.

It highly depends on the workload of my team. My teammates were trying to keep me busy, which is good and means I would be more exposed to deals and transactions. However, this is not a busy summer, so sometimes I did not have much to work on. But that also provides a good opportunity for me to read through case studies and talk to people.

Generally speaking, I was responsible for every single piece of work I delivered. It means that I need to make sure my work is flawless, no matter if it is an internally circulated slide or an pitch book distributed to clients. But I was always able to get comments from my teammates, which I could use to further improve my work. In that sense, I was given much responsibility, but also support.

I believe what I actually worked on does not matter as much as the soft skills I gained from this experience, which is transferable to whatever I will do in the future. It is the attitude to achieve excellence, attention to detail, courage to speak up, time management and productivity which could surely help me on my future career and life. In addition to that, the transactions that I actually involved in allows me to understand how real life business is different from the theories I learned from class.

People are friendly, helpful and supportive. During daytime, my teammates are always talking to clients on the phone or in the meeting. But typically I get half an hour or an hour to have lunch with my teammates or other interns. Morning and earlier afternoon are the most busy moment for me.

I was able to get involved in lots of networking and speakers events, from which I could learn how people from different business function works. There were also many training sessions, which taught the technical skills and discussed sector specific case studies. Theses trainings are extremely useful to understand different sectors in the investment bank, and allow me to explore my interests.

I do think more trainings can be implemented. The one hour training is very informative, but for whose who are especially interested in a specific desk or want to explore more, it may be too short. The good thing is almost every major business function in CCS will give a speech on their division, which allows me to learn each team better, if not deeper.

I definitely recommend UBS as a top employer.

I had a welcome dinner and party in the first couple of weeks, a mid-term social, and will have a final one as well, with my team. Also, we always have dinner together at our desks.

The cost of socialising is actually quite high around my area.