CCS summer intern Review

I liked making myself a clear idea of what investment banking in London is like. I particularly liked the fact to work on a sector team, it brought me knowledge that I did not have and made me learn a lot on a broad range of companies whose activity was rather blurry before my experience. I liked the challenges the placement represented (fast and deep thinking, problem solving, attention to details etc) I liked speaking English on a daily basis. I less liked the volume of work which prevented me from digging more on each specific matter.

Along the internship I felt like my work was valued by my colleagues and supervisors. I felt that people in my team were grateful for the help I could provide them with and my colleagues always thanked me for my input on each specific job. I also felt valued by the fact that my colleagues trusted me with tasks requiring seriousness and responsibility, and this, early on. I also liked the fact that my colleagues were open to suggestions.

Each of my supervisors (from analysts to MD) showed availability to me when I had questions and played a different role during the internship. I had two informal meetings with my line-manager, one at the beginning and one mid-term so she made sure I set properly my objectives and gave me feedback from the rest of the team. Analysts and ADs gave me feedback on a daily basis to make me progress and better apprehend the tasks I was asked to complete.

My workload was varying from day to day, but I never spent a whole day unoccupied. On the days that were very busy I was at max working on two projects with similar deadlines. Working hours can be long. Most of the time, the early definition of deadlines allowed me to organize not to feel overwhelmed by my workload and not to work on short deadlines. Nevertheless some late comments to pass on in the day could make me stay at office later than usual.

For a 2-month internship, I was positively surprised with the level of responsibility I was granted. Very early-on during the placement I worked directly (without analyst supervision) with an ED, D, and ADs. At several occasions, the MD addressed his requests directly to me, giving me the full responsibility on the output. Nevertheless, not so much surprise regarding the type of tasks you achieve on the period (e.g. no exposure to full modeling).

I had a financial academic background so most of the things taught during the trainings were already very familiar. I would say that I learnt more on the job than during the trainings we received but they are useful to new-comers in finance for sure. I learnt how to adapt to internal processes, to leverage internal resources, how to make easy sanity checks that prevent obvious and sometimes ridiculous mistakes. These skills will help me in my professional life regardless of what position I'll occupy.

In my team, the general atmosphere was good. I felt that people were friendly and did not feel the need to put pressure on you as they figured you already put enough on yourself. Communication within the team was ok, meetings with the full team on a project were organized which allowed misunderstandings to be cleared.

I would say that over the all period, the organization could be improved. We had one full week of training, most of which were not practical but theorical or development oriented. It could, in my opinion, have been shortened. Interesting talks by bank employees or external speakers were organized but started early in the morning which made it difficult to fit with investment banking working hours.

I felt that the firm did invest a lot in our personal development, maybe more than on practical training. Along the placement we had to attend several banking products presentation which gave us an insight in each of the teams included in the investment banking division, conference on self development but were provided with only few technical and practical trainings in my opinion.

I think they are appealing if you are interested in working in investment banking in London. As long as you know you can resist the long hours and the pressure, and juggle from one project to another as they keep coming in, I consider this organization, more specifically my team as appealing. The upsides are to be able to work directly with and to learn from experienced senior bankers, and talented people from different backgrounds (academic, country etc)

Average

Usual for London

I guess it was good but could not really enjoy it because of the long working hours

Some corporate drinks, one summer party.