Summer Intern Review

The Summer Internship was excellent, there was a real focus on making sure that we experienced HSBC as broadly as possible, which is essentially the purpose of an internship. Everyone at the company was eager to answer any questions and wanted to see you succeed in your internship. There was a real focus on succeeding and bettering your career as a whole.

This one is up to the intern themselves; if you want to become part of your team and engage in work that will help the team, you can do it. However, it is up to the intern themselves to make sure they engage and make themselves valuable. But because of the drive for everyone to succeed in the workplace, you do feel invested in.

My manager was very good at balancing the need for me to self-learn and the need to teach me about Commercial Banking.

The internship was incredibly busy, I was full up with work because of projects given by my placement team as well as a big project given by the internship team. I was never bored or without work.

This one is up to the intern again, If you want to get involved and do real work involving the responsibility to get it right, you can. Thus, the capacity for responsibility was huge.

A lot of the time the skills I developed in my degree (self-learning, certain theoretical knowledge) helped me on my internship. The main skills I learnt on my internship were technical and very fulfilling. What could be improved is the learning of day-to-day technical skills that the team use, because we need to know whether we enjoy the day to day work.

My office had a wide range of teams, meaning theoretically people shouldn't interact too much because they were all separate. However, all of the teams in the office spoke to each other and were friends with each other, which was great to see that there was a vibrant work environment.

The day-to-day work was well structured because I always had a brief and a time frame. What could have been improved was the internship project which (although largely self-driven) seemed a bit unstructured and could have been developed with some time frames in order for us to structure ourselves more effectively.

The company invested a lot of time in making sure that we experienced the business and understood how the business ran holistically. Moreover, there were a lot of people giving us speeches about different departments, how to make the best of our internships etc. which was very useful and showed that people in the company wanted us to learn.

The future prospects at HSBC are very appealing indeed, they constantly remind you of the potential career moves at the company and how to further yourself. The graduate scheme seems like an extension of the internship in a sense that it is based on placements. Thus the employment prospects are very appealing.

There was a very good social scene, although this was up to how well you could interact with your colleagues. The internship team put on events during the intern meetup days where we could engage in team building exercises in order to develop a good social team with our fellow interns. Although what could be worked on is social events as a whole across the company, there was only one large event in my time here.

The cost of living in Birmingham is fairly reasonable, basic living is not too expensive and the city is fairly nice in the centre. Some areas are a bit rough which means you have to be picky when meeting up with friends but Birmingham is a reasonable city to live in.

The nightlife was very good, there are lots of bars you can meet with friends that cater to a whole range of tastes. Also, a lot of them are in the centre so you don't have to head too far to meet up with your friends; moreover, Birmingham is fairly accessible allowing everyone to join in.

There is some stuff like football amongst some employees which was well advertised. However, organised events with other people who work in the team are sparse and can be developed. The company can work on developing events and team-building outside of work. As of many things, it is up to how you have developed your social life.