Insight week Review

Fidelity worked really hard to make this week as enjoyable as possible. There were lots of fun activities and everyone was friendly, so although I came away knowing that this wasn’t a career I was interested in, I still really enjoyed myself a lot and had made some great friends. Would definitely recommend.

Very highly valued as a future employee, it really felt like Fidelity wanted us to want to work there, and that they were interested in our backgrounds and skills. It was an insight week and not an internship so we couldn’t contribute to the firm and weren’t proper employees but that is as expected.

The HR guy who organised the week and was basically with us all the time in the back of the room was absolutely lovely. Any support we needed I’m sure he would provide. But also there was lots of advice on careers from all the speakers etc and we could always ask questions.

I’m not studying a finance relation degree subject so in that respect it was completely useless but I’m sure it was very helpful to the economics students. I decided investment banking was more for me and I think it’s valuable to have the perspective of the buy side before deciding on sell side.

So well structured, it was four days so the first it was like an intro from a senior person and then overviews of the three different main areas in the firm. And the next two days were more focused on skills from an outside speaker and panels of grad students, and the last day was preparing a stock pitch and presenting it.

So friendly everyone was lovely and so welcoming. From the doormen to the HR guy to all the asset managers and everyone else on the week the atmosphere was just great. I’ve made some great friends from the week so to be honest it was good as just a socialising opportunity.

Two days of skills sessions on presenting and self confidence and development and resilience which were alright. To be honest I don’t think their quality matched those of the sessions fidelity provided themselves but they were fairly entertaining. It’s from this company that lots of the banks seem to use in their insight weeks because I had to listen to another presentation by them in my next insight.

Not really, we weren’t even able to visit the offices and were just located in two different boardrooms all the time. It would’ve been really nice to be able to do some shadowing or just to visit people in their offices instead of only meeting them at lunch and in the room.

Fidelity seems like a really open warm and welcoming company and if I did decide to go into asset management it’s definitely the firm I would choose. It’s really managed to avoid the cold corporate culture which is so prevalent in the industry, maybe because it’s quite small in size.

Defiantly because I decided that I didn’t want to do asset management from it which was good because it means I didn’t start an internship before realising this which would’ve been such a waste of time. I suppose being able to work shadow would have helped me be more confident in this decision.

Fidelity booked a really nice apartment close to the office (a two bed flat for each pair of students). And reimbursed train travel and gave us a really nice breakfast and lunch and tea every day but not supper unfortunately. So they came off as very generous and willing to invest.

Yes yes yes this is exactly the same question as the one below. Employees did talks and came to lunches and were all lovely in general but we couldn’t shadow them because of privacy laws and we hadn’t signed the forms which was a pity but oh well I’m sure we’ll survive.

The networking was great especially over the delicious lunches they provided but we didn’t have any drinks evenings. I thought this was good because I was really tired anyhow because I’d just finished my uni term and an exam, but others were disappointed because apparently last year they went up the London eye.

Mmm not really I can’t really remember anything in particular that was mentioned but I’m sure they have stuff. To be quite honest I’m not sure why people want their places to employment to arrange extracurricular activities for them as you spend quite enough time at work anyhow without all that.

I would recommend this insight to a friend although I don’t have any who are interested in London. But yes this was a great insight and fidelity looks like a lovely place to work. And it’s a week so it doesn’t take up very much time of your life so give it go.