Intern Review

I've really enjoyed my 10 week internship. I feel I have learnt so much that will be helpful to me when I get back to university. I have done things to help the team which has made me feel part of the team. As it is my first placement I didn't think I would be doing a lot but I have learnt so much. I feel like I have gained a lot from being in this sort of working environment which is completely to new to me. I have learnt so much about banking but also professionalism in the work place. I have loved working in Lloyds for my 10 week internship.

As soon as I walked in my line manager introduced me to everyone in the team and straight away they were all so nice. As soon as I spoke to them I knew that they were the type of people who would help me when I needed them and throughout these 10 weeks I have realised that I was right. Everyone has been so open to me and I can go to them whenever I want to. I feel they value me and trust me with specific things that they show me how to do then allow me to do them by myself. One of my colleagues sent me an Ecard to thank me for the way I've helped the team with financial escalations.

My Line manager continuously checks on me even though she isn't in Birmingham all the time. We have regular time in her diary to talk about what I've done and if there is anything I need from her. She constantly checks that I have enough work to do and if I don't she will give me some work straight away. She knows how it could be hard for someone to be working in this environment for 10 weeks and she is so nice to me that it makes me feels at ease in the workplace. She guides me if I ever need help and gives me constant support in aspects of work but also outside of work if I ever need it.

I was often very busy on most days and had a good balance of how much work I had to complete. I was never too stressed with the amount of work that I had because I knew that I would get it done. I would say that I handled my workload very well and on a daily basis I constantly had something to do.

I was very happy that a lot of people gave me a lot of responsibility. I was given responsibilities that were on going throughout the 10 weeks such as financial escalation. I was given responsibility by many different colleagues and it made me feel like I was part of the team. I also felt that I was actually contributing to the team and was helping all my colleagues.

Specifically to me, as I am studying accounting and finance, this internship will hugely benefit me as it is hugely relevant to my course. I have learnt more about statements (specifically the cash flow statement) and as I will be making a lot of them in my second year of university and this will be very useful to me. I have learnt how to cope with a workload and being able to handle this. I have learnt vital skills that I can take with me wherever I work and am happy I got this opportunity to develop and learn more about myself as a person.

The atmosphere in my office was very important to me. I liked the fact that we were working but we could always have a little chat whilst working and this made the atmosphere much more relaxed but we all knew it was a working environment. As long as we all got our work done we knew it was fine to have a chat. We could go to have a coffee from the machine whenever we wanted and everyone would always ask everyone for a drink. It felt like a real team.

My internship was very well organised mainly due to my line manager. At the beginning I was shadowing more people as they were teaching me how to do things and then they were giving me the responsibility to do these things by myself. I felt everything was very organised and I knew what I was doing on a daily basis.

I went on a few training days to the Solihull centre, one of which was a trade event that I felt I learnt a lot from. Trade is something that I had never really understood and it was nice to be trained on this and consolidate my learning by delivering a group presentation about trade at the end of the day. This allowed me to develop my knowledge of things that I wanted to and I felt like the firm invested in me alloweing me to attend this.

After this internship I would love to work in Lloyds bank. I would like to think that after my second internship I would get a referral on to the graduate scheme and I would love if this happened. I love the way things work in this organisation and the future employment prospects in this organisation look very bright.

There was a very good social scene between the fellow placement students and this was hugely to do with the fact that we had a community charity challenge. All of us working together meant that we had many meetings together and sometimes went out to lunch together or after work together.

As I live in Birmingham and my placement was in Birmingham I felt like I knew a lot of the places and this made it easier to know exactly where to go. Socialising wasn't expensive at all and when we would go out to places that weren't too expensive therefore, socialising in the area that we worked in wasn't too expensive.

None of us really went to see the nightlife.

The opportunities to get involved in outside off work were mainly things that we had going on with University.