Summer Analyst, Business Technology Review

I found the whole internship experience at RBS very valuable. The people were very helpful and sweet, and I had a lot of wiggle space and flexibility to tweak bits and pieces of my internship so the content was more suitable for my needs, aspirations and skill set I wanted to take away from the internship. My peers and other interns were a lot of fun, and although there was not a lot of initiative from RBS to give us a platform to network and connect, I did enjoy the social aspect a lot.

My team was amazing and instantly took me on board as they would do with a full-time hire, which was very encouraging and set me off onto a good start. I was involved in all non-work activities they organised and was even given space myself to organise socials for us. Overall, it is fair to say a lot of effort went into making me feel like I am a valued member of the team, but on the other hand, I do not think this was necessarily a push from the company, but rather my luck in being assigned a good team from what I heard from other interns.

My manager was a great fit personality and interest wise, very experienced and knowledgeable, and I found his involvement one of the best parts of my internship experience. I was assigned high-level, but clear tasks and was expected to ask questions along the way, but at the same time I had full autonomy in details of my working process and formatting and presenting of the final deliverable. My manager and colleagues were always helpful and willing to help, and I agreed on regular check in - check out structures with my manager, which I found very helpful especially at the beginning.

The working hours were pretty standard considering my role was within Finance Technology, a back office technology function serving Finance department bank-wide. Regular agenda for the day would consist of several meetings complemented by working sessions, so I found it pretty chilled and was usually leaving between 5 and 7pm. Whenever I was staying later, it was always my inner drive to finish my work rather than a push from the company. My manager was also very vocal about the importance of work-life balance, which made the whole situation a lot easier.

I did not feel like the work I did was substantial or, for that matter, directly impacting the business in some way. This however might be a function of the nature of work that my team undertakes, which is why I was given a standalone piece of work rather than contributing to daily tasks of my team. At the same time, I feel like RBS could have done a better job picking a team where I could be fully integrated in day-to-day life of my colleagues and collaborate with them more closely.

Apart from reinforcing my existing soft skill sets in presentation and teaching, the internship at RBS served as a good foundation to help me with task prioritisation and relationship building, which I believe will be a lot more valuable long-term

The atmosphere at the office was awesome, so that would definitely be one of the reasons why I would consider coming back to the company. My team is super supportive and we had a lot of laughs, but I gathered this was not the same experience for many of the other fellow interns. I would say overall, the culture at RBS is much more chilled, relaxed and collective than in other banks, where typically you would feel the competition and everyone would be a bit more aggressive in pursuing self interest - I guess this is a function of laying off the investment banking division, and focusing strongly on retail banking again. Of course, depends what you are after but I found this to be a good fit for myself.

I think this ranks very standard banking industry-wise, but is much better than other corporations I have been to. Whilst this was overall a good experience with a lot of structure in place, couple of interns had an issue with the HR organisation side of things, including myself. Having signed the offer to join for a particular role I was interested in, I did not hear from the HR for a couple of weeks and understood they were not able to confirm a slot for my chosen role, for which I joined the company in the first place. This was going on even throughout the induction week, just to find out that I was assigned to work with a completely different team with a completely irrelevant role description to my original choice on Day 1 on the job - not a pleasant experience, and I also never got an explanation I asked for.

You do get a buddy from your peer group, who is a full time hire to support you, answer your questions and help with assessed elements of the internship scheme. You also get a mentor - your manager and other colleagues who are happy to help. Apart form these features, you have full access to firm's internal web-based learning materials, whether you want to skill yourself up on MS office or your presentation skills. You do not get any budget for external training and development unless you join full-time, but I presume that is standard across other banks as well.

One thing I would look for in my career is growth - be it in a role, a division, the firm or the industry overall. With RBS declining for the past few years, I do not consider it to be the best starting point for a fresh graduate. Whilst I did meet a few people who were extremely happy and fulfilled in their job roles at RBS, the pattern I noticed is that they would rarely grow internally, but rather join the bank later on in their careers as a safe choice with good growth opportunities, good work life balance and nice salary. As a graduate, I would rather seek places that give you a push to progress and look good on your CV. However, I would definitely consider joining RBS later on, as I feel like there are a lot of opportunities for impact and improvement for experienced hires, once you have a solid foundation to your skills.

Yes - RBS threw together a few events for new joiners, including a dinner in Edinburgh during the induction week for all the interns from around the UK, which was great. We had 2-3 more RBS-led socials, but of course were given the platform to organise socials ourselves, which we did.

London is crazy expensive, that does not need to be elaborated on. Considering the costs of rent and living here are 20-30% than in other parts of the UK, I found it a bit ridiculous that we were paid the same salary as interns in Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh. If you are hoping to come to RBS London as an intern and save up some money for next year at university, at least in Business Technology, I would lower my expectations.

Excellent - it is London!

Lots of them - you do get a good grounding as an intern with various activities, like socials, or volunteering day we did through a fundraiser with Prince's Trust Fund, which was great fun and an amazing opportunity to meet interns from outside your division and network. On the top of this, you are generally free to join other events meant for full-time hires, I attended an extra volunteering day in this way and a conference on technology trends in banking which was great fun.