RBWM Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at HSBC. There was not a single person who was not willing to help me in whichever way I needed it and I managed to speak to a huge variety of different people about their roles. I had the opportunity to get involved with a variety of projects and one particular project resulted in my proposals being implemented onto the HSBC website.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues. As I was working within a small team for the whole 8 weeks of my internship, I got to know everybody and felt extremely valued every single day that I walked into the office. Everyone was more than happy to show you what their role entailed and were always around to answer any questions.

My line manager was fantastic at providing feedback and arranging regular 1:1 sessions to discuss any concerns that I may have had. However, there was a slight lack of guidance surrounding the instructions laid out for my intern project which lasted 8 weeks. Myself and a team of interns were given a brief, however, it was very vague and we felt uncertain about the direction that we needed to take our research in.

On some days I was extremely busy, with plenty of meetings, phone calls and tasks to carry out. However, this was more relevant to the last half of my internship. In the first half, there was the occasional day where there was little for me to, particularly if I had done all work relevant to my project as this was the only work I was actually set for the whole 8 weeks. I often had to seek out my own work to fill my time.

I was given responsibility in that myself and a team had a project to carry out for the Head of Customer Services for the UK, however, the project was more to allow us as young people to have a fresh perspective on some of the ways we perform our services as a business. In terms of responsibility for other tasks, this was limited. However, I sought out my own position of responsibility within another project and that was thoroughly enjoyable.

The knowledge that I now have of a corporate/financial environment shall be invaluable, particularly as I wish to work within the finance sector. Additionally, the network of people I have made is fantastic, including people from all over the world. This will assist me in forging an international career, and shall add to my contacts once I commence my MSc at LSE. I have learnt a lot about myself and how I work in a corporate environment, as this was my first official work experience, and that shall now be extremely beneficial going forward as I know which elements I need to work on and what my strengths are.

Everyone within the team was extremely friendly and happy every day. Occasionally, there was a drop in motivation from my fellow interns as, understandably, they would become frustrated with the sometimes limited amount of work/responsibility that we were given. It was then slightly hard to work alongside people who were slightly negative.

It was very organised in terms of the fact that we had regular contact from the internship programme team and they set up weekly calls that had a theme, which meant that we could attend a WebEx session that talked about a specific topic. That was extremely interesting. They regularly communicated to us in terms of the necessary tasks that we needed to do, such as self-assessment forms. Additionally, they arranged several charity events for us, including and Out of Office Challenge and that was a great way for all of the interns to get together. However, I do wish that I had had the opportunity to spend time within different departments. My internship was within Retail Banking and Wealth Management but I only saw the retail side and I only spent time with the Customer Services team. It would have been beneficial in order for me to expand my knowledge of the industry, to spend time within different departments. Additionally, I feel that there should have been more structure surrounding the tasks we were given to do. I only got set one over-arching project for the whole 8 weeks and I would have preferred to have had weekly objectives/assignments that broadened my skill set.

As mentioned above, it is evident that the internship and graduate team want to do everything they can to make sure that we enjoy our experience and remain attracted to HSBC as an employee. However, I think more attention should be paid during the internships to ensuring that the interns achieve a wider experience of the division that they are in rather than just one specific area.

I am attracted to the HSBC Graduate programme due to the development opportunities, however, I am concerned about the fact that I would need to spend up to a year working within a branch. It seems as if the graduate scheme is much more steered to Retail Banking rather than Wealth Management and seeing as it all comes under one division, I find this surprising.

There were a couple of arranged events for the interns but I feel that there should have been more opportunities for us all to get together. There were interns across divisions and I think it would have been nice if social events could have been arranged for the interns within each division.

London is a very expensive area, therefore, going for drinks after work etc. is hard to do on a regular basis.

Nightlife in London is absolutely fantastic, however, as mentioned above, it is hard to do on a regular basis as it is expensive.

As I have said previously, there were a few arranged events for us all but not many. I managed to get involved with one of the graduate committees called Gen-Z, however, I had to proactively search out this opportunity myself and it wasn't something that was readily available to interns until the very end when there was a chance to get involved with the Gen-Z rebranding project. Fortunately, I got to lead this project as I was the first intern to show an interest.