Womens Immersion Programme EMEA Review

I really enjoyed the insight and think it was a really worthwhile programme, especially in contrast to the shorter insight schemes where you don't actually get any real experience of what it's like to work in the business. Nomura really put in the effort to organise a varied and interesting programme.

Because we were much more interns than school-kids on an insight programme, we were treated like summer interns and had our own security passes, desks, and work to do etc. This is in contrast to the insight programme, which appeared to mainly just be students going round from HR session to HR session in a large group.

My team was really generous in giving team to help me understand concepts and explain the work I needed to do to me. We each had a buddy we could ask questions of and a HR person allocated to the IB/GM/Corporate interns. I guess there could have been more finance-prep materials provided before the insight.

I'm not studying finance so obviously it's not relevant at all, but it was certainly very helpful for future interviews/internships/jobs, and there were sessions arranged geared towards that sort of thing as well which were very useful. The online training you receive before the programme is very useful but there's not enough of it.

Well structured, lots of time to discover the company by yourself, and then some organised sessions which were helpful. The first day was just HR and this not very good outside speaker, so that was a bit frustrating, but the rest of the weeks were really good and events well organised.

It's an investment bank, not a party, but everyone was really welcoming. There was a really friendly feel amongst most of the interns instead of the competitiveness that can sometimes occur, and that was really cool. I think it just depends on whether you're suited to an investment bank or not.

Online training before was really helpful and would definitely like more of it, the first day training was not very useful at all, individuals were the best in explaining how things worked and showing the ropes. The sessions organised by HR were generally very good, and offered up all the different options available.

A complete honest insight, cut through all the marketing and so on to what working at Nomura would actually be like. Really important because it is so different to how you'd imagine it and to how all these investment banks sell it. You will know really quickly if this is a career you want to have or not.

Definitely saw the company culture just by being here. There's lots of things going on - a bake off for charity, the JP Morgan fun run for charity, guitar and piano lessons, a bike shed, a gym etc etc. Saying that, I imagine most employees are too busy to get involved in these things.

Either you want to do this or you don't but you will know instantly pretty much. So its incredibly useful to be able to know this before going through all the stress of the summer internship applications because imagine if you get there on the first day of the summer and realise you don't want to do it.

We were paid per day instead of having accommodation/food arranged, which is good if you already live in London, but absolutely awful if you don't because it's not enough to cover the cost of accommodation for two weeks. And when you worked out the hours that you worked, you weren't even being paid the minimum wage most days.

Yep, loads of networking all the time, I have networked more in the past couple of weeks than I think I have ever done before. Obviously really useful in discovering different areas of the bank you might be better suited to than those allocated to you so that's helpful of course.

There was a drinks evening organised with the 'insight week' people as well as the interns which was a little pointless, because hardly any people from the business showed up, so you couldn't really network, but at the same time it wasn't relaxed enough (and the insight week people were too competitive) to have a good time.

Lots of things if you ever have the time for it! Lots of sports things, cycling, gym, etc, and charity events like the bake off and the fun run and so on. I'm not sure what else but I'm sure there's lots of networks going on, oh and there's music lessons.

Yes definitely, you really get the real deal at Nomura, which is so useful for discovering what investment banking is like, but also discovering what Nomura itself is like which is very useful if you're thinking about a future career here. And it's longer and much more interesting than other placements.