T&O Summer Intern Review

Overall my placement was excellent. The two most important things for an intern were afforded to me - a manager/buddy who was willing to invest the time into coaching me (both the skills for the job as well as all the soft, but important, skills) and also trusting my ability and giving me real impacting work and responsibility, not menial tasks "for the intern to do". Only minor thing here was that no preference in what area I worked in - luckily for me I ended up somewhere that turned out I enjoyed. However some preference would be nice; e.g. I would have preferred more hands-on technical roles.

Definitely felt like part of the team - employees I came across were all very friendly and treated me as if I was a full time employee. There is a small amount of politics as per every organisation - on the whole though, I was treated as equal and did not feel like I was looked down upon.

I got very luck and ended up with a manager who was willing and enthusiastic, giving me a huge amount of time to guide/support me. While your experience with a manager will come down to luck as to who you are allocated, in my personal experience I was very pleasantly surprised about how much time was invested in me.

The team I was part of was small and hence I had to contribute - which meant I always had a lot of work to do and I can barely count on one hand how many moments over 10 weeks I felt like my work was sparse. Again this is down to your team and manager to ensure you are kept busy - I certainly was.

A huge amount more than I was expecting. I was given complete responsibility for a core section of the team's work within a month of starting. I was also given a wide range of other work which equated to the workload and responsibility of an S2 employee - i.e. in the 10 weeks I was there, the difference between my responsibility and others on the team was virtually nothing. I will caveat this with the fact that this is largely a result of the team structure in my area, and my manager (i.e. your mileage may vary).

The job knowledge and skills were interesting, yet they are unlikely to really benefit me unless I continue down this exact career path. However, the soft skills - interpersonal skills, stakeholder management - will be massively beneficial for my future career. My role was in T&O service delivery - specifically in a consultancy-style role - and hence I learnt a huge amount about how to interface with others and how to be successful in the workplace. This is something you can not learn via degree studies etc., and so the focus on these soft skills during my placement was an amazing experience, which are most definitely skills for life.

Open place style office. Makes it easy to have ad-hoc meetings and hence can be quite loud. Usually a friendly atmostphere with the typical dress down Fridays and free junk food for no reason.

The HR stuff to sort out beforehand was a bit of a mess. - Didn't get responses to my enquiries, unless it was about specifically something they needed from me. Seems to be a similar experience when talking to other interns and grads. - Vetting process required in-branch faxing(!) and was slow and I had to do it twice - not from my own fault. - Received a contract barely a week earlier than the start date. Based on this, the paperwork/HR stuff barely deserves two stars. (It got done eventually at least?). But some other points brings it up a bit, including: - The assessment day stood out as being both well organised and run by very friendly people to help your nerves. - When I actually arrived though, it was decently organised - computer was there for me, manager had an access pass etc.

The EIC team during the placement were good at educating and making us aware of the various parts of the bank as well as the provided opportunities we could take to further our own development. My manager and team invested a lot in me, which I felt was really exceptional.

Quite appealing - there is a wide range of roles available (if you can secure a job after the grad scheme). There is a clear path from the placement to the grad scheme as well, so the fact that I have a job after graduating is a plus (i.e. a relief). I don't know much about furthering career opportunities within the organisation; from my limited impression, it's neither great nor bad...

Not particularly...partially due to interns being spread around the business (and locations). We could have organised social stuff ourselves, but unless someone takes the initiative to organise, nothing would happen. Admittedly I am guilty of this, as I had a lot of work to do which I wanted to focus my attention on. Perhaps the EIC team could get the ball rolling on this front and organise some fun events in the first few weeks to kickstart it a bit...?

I lived at home and drove to MK. But rent nearby is reasonable - around £350-£400 per month from what I have heard. MK as a place is very US inspired with shops/restaurants spread around in American style strip malls. If you can find good places to go to (which there are) then it's nice - not cheap but not expensive either.

I'm not sure there is one...

There are CSR initiatives we had to do as interns (self-organised). Other than that, not in my experience.