Summer Analyst Review

I came in with very high expectations about the job and I was positively surprised to see them matched. I love the job, I like the company and the people and I think I made the right choice in terms of team. I am now even more sure that this is what I want to do.

It may be a struggle to feel valued by colleagues, mainly because nobody has time to give you feedbacks unless you chase them for it. I have found that, deep down, everybody actually values your work and your help, but it seems that showing it explicitly is not industry practice. It also depends from team to team from what I can tell.

It depends on the project and on the person. On average, I would say that it's actually easier to get support and guidance when working with seniors vs when working with juniors, but simply because of issues with the time management. In any case, everybody is willing to support you if you ask at the right time and place. It may be difficult to balance, but eventually you get the hang of it.

This industry is really cyclical, and every project is different. It also depends on staffing. I have had a week and a half where I was leaving at 10-11PM, and two weeks where I was constantly leaving at 2+AM, so it really depends. I actually loved being busy much more than being "not really busy" though, because part of the beauty of this job is it being fast-paced and unpredictable. I feel like I was actually more tired after a light day than a heavy one, because the adrenaline kicks in.

Bear in mind that in such a short time span you cannot expect to be given full and direct responsibility on everything. The first half of the internship is basically you learning and getting the hang of the job, so you cannot be given responsibility of the projects. Towards the end of it, though, if you have shown you are capable to manage it, you can be given way more responsibility. I have worked as an analyst on a few project (i.e. I had only seniors or associates above me, without analysts), which is stressful but rewarding also psychologically.

The learning curve is just impressive. I feel I learned more in 10 weeks than I did in months of uni.

It will depend from team to team. Small teams have an easier time getting close to each other, while in big teams you may get kind of lost in the pool. On the other end, you get exposure to different people and different projects and you are not "stuck" with the same people all along.

Staffing was good, and the job itself I simply loved. I feel we could get rid of all the side-events like the talks and the mid-summer event: they just distract from the main focus and disrupt the overall staffing. If anything, I would try and organize more "networking-based" kind of events, because those are useful to get to know other people in the bank.

I feel I fared well on the mid-term review and I may be on track to get an offer for a full time job.

The atmosphere with the intern class was simply incredible. I feel like we really bonded, especially in my team, we regularly went out together or scheduled lunches or dinners together and we became friends more than co-interns.

London it's very expensive, but the company subsidizes dinner and cabs home, so the only real expenses are lunches and rent + socializing. Not cheap, but it's nobody's fault.

It's good, Canary Wharf is "tailored" to bankers, so everybody goes to xyz place at certain times of the week. It's obviously a work area, so don't expect party hours, but it's a nice little concentration of people sharing the same interests and hours, so it's good for socializing (more than the City, I think).

Personally, I only worked two sundays