Summer Intern Review

I had a fantastic time on my placement - HSBC as a company is a great place to work. You are encouraged to be completely authentic and bring your unique qualities to the table, no matter what your background is. The internship is so rich with content - you fit in an incredible amount of activities in just 2 months.

Coming in to such a large and established company as an intern is nerve-wracking as you feel like you are at the bottom of the pecking order, but the reality is completely different. Your colleagues treat you as an employee and recognise that you have been selected for this placement because you have the potential to bring a lot to the company.

The success of the internship depended mostly on having a good manager - I was lucky that mine was unbelievably dedicated and supportive during my time here. She was always happy to answer questions and provide help when needed. However, she was very receptive to my needs; if I needed time to work and figure things out on my own then she was more than happy to take a step back.

The nature of my particular project meant that I was very busy on a day-to-day basis. This was especially because there are also numerous intern activities during the internship that take you out of the office, so really, you only have 5 weeks to complete your project. You are also encouraged to find extra-curricular things to do and explore other areas of the business, so you are never bored. It is however down to you to manage your time the way you see fit.

For me personally, I was the sole owner of my project, so there was a lot of responsibility for me to complete my project successfully. My project had a large impact on the ways of working within the team, completely changing around the architecture of how they communicate with oversees stakeholders. I had a big responsibility to ensure that all stakeholder needs were met in my project.

My degree is completely different to finance, however I have developed an incredible amount in 8 weeks, and the skills I have gained, namely increased confidence, interpersonal skills, project management, public speaking and time management will undoubtably be applicable to all aspects of my education and working life. What you gain out of an experience like this is invaluable.

The office was quite corporate, being in London, however everybody is lively, friendly and relaxed; you don't feel like it's a stiff environment. There is lots of chatter with people having conference calls and meetings, so it's not silent. People come up to each other to have chats often as well.

It was extremely well organised - all intern events were planned out in advance and you were always given all of the information you need in advance. You really felt that there was a carefully curated schedule for the whole of the 8 weeks, with all activities selected to aid your personal development.

The company invested in me more than I could imagine, in terms of the personal development activities set up weekly for the interns, out of office activities and the dedication of my manager to my personal development. You also have a grad coach for support, so you always have many points of contact.

Extremely appealing.

With the numerous intern activities, the social scene was very good. However it also depends upon the number of interns placed in your location, and also the motivation of the interns to organise events as well. There were two interns who volunteered as social secretaries, who organised events for the interns in our location.

Being in London, going out to socialise is obviously not going to be cheap. However your pay takes this into account. I also live in London anyway, so I didn't have to pay rent.

In Canary Wharf, there isn't really a nightlife as such - interns usually went elsewhere to go clubbing. However there were countless places to choose from to go for after-work drinks and hang out. However, being London, the transport is extremely good so you can easily travel elsewhere for a night out.

Again, there were intern events set up every week, taking you outside of the office. Some of these events were planned by interns, others by the intern programme team.