Investment Placement Review

I have learnt a lot in a very short space of time and having spent the whole time with a single team, for most of the time I have felt like an employee rather than an intern. It's a big positive if the placement crosses over with the summer interns as it did for me as that scheme is very well structured with insights and presentations from different areas of the business and social events with the other interns and previous graduate cohorts.

My manager found it helpful to have me on board rather than a drain on his resources (in fact my impression was that more managers at M&G want to have interns and placement students than there are to go around). One of the major benefits of staying for 6 months (or more) as opposed to an 8-10 week internship is that I had the opportunity to go for training in some of the major software tools. After having done these early on I had a lot more confidence that I could contribute and be useful.

From talking to some of the interns this depends on the manager's style. My experience was that my manager preferred to regularly give feedback on my work day-to-day rather than to have dedicated feedback meetings. I think perhaps more regular specific feedback would have been useful to know where I stood relative to others - because at the end of the day you are competing with the summer interns and graduate applicants for a job.

This varied depending on my manager's own schedule. At University you get used to either working at 100% or near 0% but it's worth remembering that if you complete tasks quickly your manager will often have to find something else for you to do - you have to be a little proactive in those downtimes and use the time to meet people from other teams or do some research of your own for interest. What I would say is that I never felt pressure to stick around late when I wasn't busy - you don't impress people with your hours in the office but with your work.

The 10 star description says 'I was running the show!' which is probably a bit excessive but given my level of experience (none prior to M&G) I was surprised at the extent of trust and responsibility. I ran meetings with company CEOs and felt like my opinions and research had an influence on my manager's portfolio. A 10/10 compared to what I could reasonably expect!

Was lucky to receive training in a couple of software tools but one of the major benefits was needing to structure my days and weeks a lot better than I did before at University.

People enjoy their jobs and it shows. A lot of people have been at M&G a long time and it's fairly relaxed (certainly compared with what my expectations were for a finance firm). Guys only wear ties for meetings with external people. There were a diverse range of personalities and nationalities.

The first part of my placement where I was effectively on the same scheme as the summer interns was very well organized with lots of insight sessions and social events that were all pre-planned. A couple (out of maybe 15-20) of the sessions could have been prepared a bit better but M&G actively takes feedback on who is good at giving these presentations. After that period I was just working with my team so there was no organisation required.

When I turned up I knew next to nothing about accounting and finance and my manager took time to teach me some basics and I was able to go for training in the main tools that analysts use. Everyone in my tem was willing to take the time to explain things.

It is always clear that you are competing with the other interns and with the graduate applicant pool so by no means is the scheme a guarantee of a job. However 6 months gives you time to firstly decide whether you want a job and secondly to demonstrate that you are good enough.

Yep - the group of interns (24 in our year) spent a lot of time together. It is a little weird when the interns finish because suddenly you become an odd one out as a temporary employee. Doing social things outside of work obviously depends on your team.

I commuted in from home on the train which helped a bit with living costs. London is obviously expensive.

Not going to pretend this is my thing - there were some cool places we went for the socials organised by M&G e.g. Bounce where you can play ping pong!

M&G has a few sports teams - I didn't choose to get involved during my placement but I had plenty of time to pursue my own hobbies outside of work.