Network Management Intern Review

I enjoyed my time here quite a lot. I appreciated the freedom I had to explore the different teams within UBS and try to understand how each team operates and works together.

I feel very lucky to have been put in a team where the environment was very friendly and open. This made for a very comfortable work environment where I felt no hesitation to approach my colleagues in regards to any issues or queries I had.

Whenever I needed help with issues or wanted something explained to me, my supervisors were very helpful in assisting me. They took time out of their schedule to make sure that any problems that I encountered were resolved.

On most days in the internship, I was busy performing tasks and writing up reports. There were one or two days where the work was light, but I used these days to perform extra reading around the material that I would be working on. I would say that this is a great balance to have as it allows for me to refresh my mind and also lets me explore other areas of the bank and the roles that they perform.

I was given tasks that had a big impact on how the team operates and conducts their work. Examples of this would be entering data into excel documents on the SharePoint which stated the amount of prime brokerage accounts that were opened, closed as well as invoice processing.

One of the main skills that I've developed is my presentational skills. This is an extremely useful skill to have and will definitely come in handy in my future studies as well as my career.

It was a very relaxed environment and my team members have a great sense of humor which always seems to lighten the mood.

I thought that the structure of the internship was really good as it allowed the interns to gain enough experience to eventually present their work/projects in the latter half. However, I do think that the communication between HR and the interns has been quite poor as some of the objectives for things like the presentation were misinterpreted and were not as informative as possible.

I was given a lot of guidance and help in terms of developing my skills. The training programs and compliance sessions that were given to use were really helpful in helping understanding UBS's culture as a whole. I felt heavily invested in and encouraged to succeed in my role.

I believe that a career at UBS looks very promising as I have been exposed to the different departments that are contained within operations and feel that I will have the opportunity to expand my knowledge on back office operations.

The social aspect of our team was not bad, although we felt very fragmented as people only grouped together with others in their department and we didn't really have any opportunity to talk to others except during the induction week.

The cost of living and working in London is extremely high, therefore working in central London has meant that lunch or drinks or travel was quite expensive. I was slightly surprised by the fact that the canteen offered food that was quite pricey and felt that they usually tended to more expensive the alternatives that were found outside for example in Finsbury Square.

The nightlife in London was great and there were a lot of opportunities to go out for drinks or dinner and to socialize with other interns and relax at the end of the week.

There were a few opportunities that UBS offered such as the JP Morgan run and volunteering at the Bridge Academy. I don't know exactly how often events like these would occur as I would need to be at UBS for a longer time, but the frequency of these events were good.