Operations Summer Analyst Review

The placement is a brilliant way of getting an insight into the company culture and values, as well as encouraging you to face new challenges. People are friendly and welcoming and the experience is completely different to that of many other banks. The experience also pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Overall, colleagues are very supportive and treat you like a valued member of the team, including involvement in team meetings and social events. If the quality of work that you produce is good, your team will let you know, and if anything requires improvement, you will be told of this too, aiding in personal development.

Manager's put in effort to make you feel comfortable in the company, including regular catch ups and meetings, however it is your own responsibility to ensure your manager is kept up to date with any issues that you are currently facing. Further support is always available across the company to deal with any issues.

You will be set objectives and need to come up with ways to effectively meet these objectives, which will take up much of the time spent on the program. When combined with daily tasks, and the many other things to get involved in, it is difficult to get bored or to have any time not working on something.

Given the short nature of the program, it is difficult to be assigned a great deal of responsibility (it would take longer to fully train somebody to complete the majority processes than the program itself - and this would not be particularly useful for building skills), however an appropriate level of responsibility was provided.

The internship was incredibly effective for personal development, huge amounts of both support and constructive criticism were provided across the term, and these have helped me identify strengths and weaknesses that I would never have considered. These skills should prove useful for the remainder of my degree and in future workplaces.

The office is full of professionals and as a result the office was also very formal and professional. However, some of the offices are more casual than others, and the atmosphere is in general very friendly and social. Overall, the atmosphere of the office in general is positive but professional, as would be expected for the industry.

The placement was fairly well organized in terms of the work carried out and events, however there was some areas that could have been improved upon in the build up to the start date, and some pronounced IT issues were faced by many on the program, which could have been sorted earlier.

The company put great deals of time into personal development of the interns, carrying out regular sessions and providing large amounts of feedback. Catch ups with managers and interactions with directors also provide extremely useful feedback that can be used for future development. Ultimately large amounts of time are spent by individuals within the company to assist those who work within it.

Internal mobility is big within the company, however I cannot comment in depth on employment prospects at this stage.

Interns were always happy to socialize and get to know the city a bit better. Weekends were a great opportunity to get to know everyone and the wide variety of people on the program made these experiences very interesting. Social events were also encouraged by the company towards the end of the program.

The cost of living for my area was relatively cheap compared to many internships which take place in London, and socializing as a result was far more common within the interns. However, the area was still not exceptionally cheap, as all big cities are generally somewhat expensive. Local food and drink venues were usually at a reasonable or low cost, making them appealing.

The nightlife as a whole was excellent, however it can be difficult to find time to experience as much of the nightlife as would have been possible due to the program being fairly intense and often working late. However, areas were often cheap and this meant that weekends could be a good break from work.

The company has large amounts of diversity and inclusion networks which often hold events, however unfortunately not many events were held during the time that we were there. This meant that the majority of out of work activities were organized by the interns, which was useful for getting to know each other but not necessarily for getting to know others within the company.