First Year Intern Review

The network, the people and how people from higher positions are all very willing to help me to grow. Such dedication to just an intern like me seems to have said a lot about HSBC. Therefore, to a great extent, HSBC had given their best to create the best experience for their interns.

Even though every colleague that I worked with has his/her things to worry about, they are very willing to help you in any way that they can. The only thing you need to do is just to ask. Specifically, all my mentors were very appreciative of what I have contributed to the firm and they also gave me a lot of advice on how I could move forward with my career.

A fantastic support system. You just have to ask them and look at yourself on the field that you can improve on.

It was a perfect balance from 9 to 5. If you want to work longer, it is up to you. But they don't expect and they encourage you to keep a healthy life work balance because they know that it is important both for you and for them. However, I took the initiatives to exceed their expectation by spending even more time than required in the office. That would demonstrate that I was ready for any responsibilities given to me.

I was running my own development. It is truly up to me to figure out what I want to do and they will then support you in anyway that they can

Analysis skills. Networking skills. If you are blessed with this internship, you should try to contribute as much as you can to your own development. Eventually, the skills you glean from all your exposure and the experience will help you not only in study but in any other job. Specifically, I understood how to apply analysis on cash flow, balance sheet and profit and loss.

It was a very conducive environment where my colleagues were very willing to help me achieve the best internship experience and make the most use of my time there. In most cases, they were also very willing to let me in on their projects, which eventually allowed me to learn a lot more about banking.

The overall internship set up was very well organised because HSBC programme was set up in such a way that both allowed me the flexibility to focus on what I wanted out of the internship and provided me with a very structured programme that I could follow throughout the internship.

In terms of personal training and development, while it was up to me to decide what I wanted to get out of the internship, my colleagues had always provided me with specific guidance on what I wanted to do and how I could utilise the company resources to better my development.

Even though every colleague that I worked with has his/her things to worry about, they are very willing to help you in any way that they can. The only thing you need to do is just to ask. Specifically, all my mentors were very appreciative of what I have contributed to the firm and they also gave me a lot of advice on how I could move forward with my career.

Because my placement was in the Midland area, the cost of living and socialising in the area weren’t that bad. Weatherspoon is a good example of where we usually hanged out. Unlike London, we didn’t suffer from the very expensive rental fee. Also, since the Midland area weren’t that bustling, we were not obliged to go out a lot.

Fundamentally, there were two charity events that we had to attend to during our internship. In both of the charity events we were split up into teams and competing against each other to raise the most amount of money for the two charity groups. To be honest, it gave us a lot of more training on our soft skills – sales pitching, customer enticing and networking.