Operations Analyst Review

I have enjoyed my internship and working in the team within Technology and Operations I was placed in. The first two weeks were a bit slow but that was because I didn’t have much to do except mandatory training and some reading. However as the internship progressed, my workload increased and I found it more enjoyable.

Very. The team, I worked in, made me feel very welcome from the first day of my internship. My colleagues helped make my internship more enjoyable. Two of my colleagues went on holiday during my internship so I was tasked with parts of their jobs while they were away. I enjoyed being given a lot of responsibility in my internship.

In my team there was a lot of support given to me throughout my internship. I felt comfortable asking questions to my colleagues, whenever I felt unsure of anything. I sometimes asked questions more than once and they were more than happy to answer them and explain in more detail so I fully understood.

At the beginning, I wasn’t really busy. I was doing mandatory training, some reading and learning about the different roles within the team. As my workload increased, I found that I was quite busy, especially at the beginning and the end of the month. But there were some days that I had a lot to do in the morning and not much in the afternoon.

A lot. For about a month, I took over a colleague’s role while she was on holiday. Her role included dealing with the bank’s claims, i.e. sending out claims to other banks for late/non receipts of funds and dealing with other banks’ claims against Santander. Another colleague also went on holiday, and did some parts of her role as well which included updating files and clearing outstanding interest and bank charges.

This internship has allowed me to further develop a lot skills such as IT, team work, problem solving, time management and communication. My role involved a lot of Excel use, and with the other skills I have mentioned, these will be very beneficial to me in my degree and future career.

The office was quite relaxed. More relaxed than I thought an office in a bank to be like. But this is due to the part of the bank I was working in.

The internship was quite organised, in my opinion. There was an intern induction at the beginning and then an induction/networking event for Technology & Operations interns and graduates the following week. There were webinars that happened fortnightly which we could dial into. My manager did organise what I would be doing throughout this internship very well.

Aside from mandatory training and weekly 1-to-1’s, there wasn’t much personal training and development throughout this internship.

Very appealing. If we did well on the internship we could be automatically placed on the graduate programme. Santander also have programmes for leadership and I think one includes international travel.

I experienced a great social scene amongst the interns I have met. Santander didn’t do much to get the interns together, apart from putting us in teams for our charity project at the induction event. I eventually met the other interns and we’ve gone out for drinks after work, gone bowling and even did pub quizzes.

For me, I was commuting from home so I didn’t experience a high cost of living, aside from travel. Socialising was quite expensive but I was working in a London office so that is to be expected.

Great. There are a lot of places for a night out in London.

Like I’ve said previously, Santander didn’t present activities to get involved in outside of work. However me and other interns did do activities such as bowling, pub quizzes and nights out.