Summer Analyst Review

Truly enjoyed my experience at the bank, culturally this company is great, a good mix of intense and laid back personalities and everyone is willing to take time out to get to know or help you. London is a great city and lots to do outside of work on top of the great internship events organised by HR.

Was encouraged to share my ideas consistently, took part in reviewing processes and felt engaged at every level of development. Worked closely with a few relevant employees to my project and was treated as a peer rather than an intern which was great. Built up a good relationship with members of the team.

Was assigned a manager, buddy and mentor, each of which had a distinct role. My mentor also set my work and project and we worked well together. My buddy was a good informal point of contact and my manager was clear in terms of feedback and goals whenever I asked. I would say that I often had to go out of my way to organise extra sessions if I felt I required them but do not see a major issue with this as it is mainly because people are busy. My mentor was incredibly helpful and supportive especially.

I had a good amount of work or learning opportunities for the duration of my time at the bank, none of my days felt empty and if I had moments of down time I could always organise to shadow people in other divisions / catch up with people / take advantage of learning resources.

Worked on an application for my project on one of the firm's newer and more exciting platforms which has huge business clients and should last for a long time into the future. As such, it was great to be asked to develop a standard application which would have global impact for the developers working on the platform, as mentioned elsewhere, my ideas were encouraged and listened to and I was set a series of tickets and essentially left to my own devices from there. I was able to go out and meet people in other divisions off my own back whenever I wanted to and attend learning sessions alongside my work where I was happy to work collaboratively with my mentor or alone.

The project I was assigned involved some front end and governance work which as a data scientist I was least familiar with in the computer science / software engineering field. This was a great chance and exposure in terms of getting to learn some technologies I was not too familiar with, although perhaps long term I would prefer to work on something which leverages my more statistical, algorithmic and mathematical background. The learning sessions offered invaluable insight into the industry as a whole and the experiences I have gained here working in this environment have definitely improved a lot of my soft skills as well. Overall I feel like the team really cared about my development and wanted to see me succeed and integrate into the company, learning as I went.

Laidback and relaxed unless there was a serious issue with the product. For the most part the office was relatively quiet but people were always open to having a chat or discussing a problem. Everyone was very friendly and it felt like a collaborative environment rather than a high pressure one.

From start to finish the internship experience was great, weekly learning sessions and more specific tech talks were organised which catered to a number of topics. Reviews were scheduled and I always felt like I had multiple points of contact should I have a question or issue with the process.

Lots of learning opportunities as I have already mentioned. On top of this they organised a plethora of networking events and allowed interns to get involved with most of the opportunities full time staff have access to. I feel like I gained a lot from the internship, in terms of technological skills and soft skills.

Would be a great place to start my career surrounded by interesting and intelligent people, provided with lots of opportunities to learn and build a network. It seems like the bank is willing to allow you to explore within or even beyond its divisions to determine where your skillset fits best. Spoke to many people who have managed to move into the area they wanted to be in without issue.

Got on with all of the interns I met, especially the technology class with whom I regularly went out for drinks etc. after work. My colleagues were similarly friendly and open to socialising which was great. I would say that the first week of training is essential to developing those friendships and networking with other interns to build up a decent friendship group before people split off into their respective teams.

London has lots of great opportunities but is very expensive.

London is without a doubt the busiest place in the UK in terms of night life. Almost every night, even week nights, there were tens if not hundreds of events occurring all over the city, ranging from theatre performances to art installations to club nights and bars. Busy place and expensive in popular locations but plenty of cheap and unique places if you are willing to look for them.

Being an employee meant we had access to a number of art exhibitions and museums around London, which I took advantage of. There were also a number of events organised by HR which were great.