Summer Analyst Review

Most days were very rewarding. The days with less work to do were a struggle sometimes; there was frequently a lot of finding work to do instead of being given it, e.g. finding ways to be helpful or finding reading to do that would help understanding overall and be useful in the longer term of the internship.

Sometimes I was able to add value and complete meaningful tasks that were helpful for my team, which made them value my input, but other times I was off working on things for my general industry knowledge which meant that I was less valued. My team overall, though, was very welcoming and helpful whenever I had questions.

I had to use a lot of new resources over the course of my internship and was given lots of training on how to use these new tools. Additionally, there was lots of support from my direct manager around answering my questions as they came up regarding both these tools and general industry knowledge that I was lacking.

Some days I had lots to do and it was genuinely helpful work that would have been done by another member of the team if I had not been there. Other times, it was very quiet and there was little for me to do beyond reading news sites and other similar general resources.

This fluctuated with how busy I was every day - sometimes it was like I was doing the job permanently as a trained professional, and other times (when there was little work for me to do) there was obviously less responsibility. Overall, I think I had a good balance of responsibility and not, but it would be better if that had been sustained at perhaps a lower level. I did, however, particularly enjoy the days where there was more responsibility given to me.

I am not studying for a finance or economics degree and so many of the technical skills I learned will not be relevant to me going forwards. However, the interpersonal skills of working in a team and within a comparatively strict hierarchy, as well as working to a regular and demanding schedule will be helpful in my continuing studies and beyond.

The department is quite divided, with people working largely individually on larger projects that co-ordinate the whole team. The general atmosphere was one of hard work with little sociable work happening during the day. People tended to work individually and only to liaise when a joint venture came up. The floor I sat on was quiet compared with the rest of the bank. However, that is not necessarily to be seen as a negative - I do not regard it as a negative.

There was a lot of structure around the placement, with HR requiring that we set goals for our personal development on each rotation. Much of the co-ordination work was done by email and once the internship started this was all communicated far in advance of the events, but the same was not necessarily true before the start of the programme. There was lots of eLearning sent ahead of time which is overwhelming and it would have been good to be informed that completing it before starting in the role wasn't entirely necessary.

There was lots of training both on the desks and in a classroom setting which, I think, is the greatest asset of the training programme at Citi. We spent a full week in genuinely relevant training and had further sessions later in the internship. This was very beneficial for those of us not studying finance.

The internship does serve to feed into the graduate programme and that became immediately clear to me from the number of graduates I spoke to who had also been interns a few years ago. It was also set out at the beginning that my division had the headcount to recruit every intern, if they were good enough. I think many desks that had interns allocated were able to accept a graduate.

Some interns did regularly go out for drinks in the evenings and there was some activity at the weekends. However, I found that many of the friends I made were from London (either at home or at university) and so they would socialise with university or home friends instead of with other interns.

It is very expensive to live and socialise in the area local to Canary Wharf and this is added to by the fact that there is no advance on salary to help out with upfront payments that are usually made for rent. For a lot of interns, I think this expense had to come from savings or parental support, something not everyone would have access to. Additionally, the food in the office canteen was really quite expensive, I don't think it is subsidised - sometimes it is cheaper to grab a sandwich from the shopping mall opposite.

Canary Wharf seems to be quite quiet in terms of night-life. However, the teams and departments do organise events like drinks and dinners and interns were welcomed to these events which allowed us to be integrated into the team and to gain a sense of how the team are integrated outside of work.

There was a day of working outside of work where we cleaned up local parks, and there was a welcome event as well as social events in the midst of the internship with senior business managers. However, these were very much work-oriented and designed really for networking, so I'm not sure they should be categorised as activities outside work.