Account Manager Support Review

Overall, I enjoyed my internship and I am glad I have done it. This was my first time experiencing anything relating to finance/banking and I don't think it's for me. However, everybody in the office really made up for it and I had a lot of fun working with them over the summer.

When I first arrived, the team were very welcoming and I settled in quickly. Once settled in and working on my own projects, everyone was very supportive and encouraging and frequently told me how much they appreciated what I was doing and told me how my work had helped them. Everybody here really appreciates each other and it's a great atmosphere to work in.

I can't fault a single person in the branch. Everybody is extremely helpful and supportive, often stopping what they're doing to answer my questions or explain things and make sure I understood or was okay before they went back to what they were doing. They do this with each other too (not just with the intern) and it's great to see everybody working together and supporting each other.

Some days I'd have enough work to keep me occupied but others I'd be bored senseless with mind numbing tasks. Unfortunately, the branch had a rather quiet period and there wasn't much on for me to do and what I was given I was completing quickly. I was consistently checked on to ask if I had enough work on and told to speak up if I was bored but sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it.

I was given full responsibility within the projects I was working on and allowed to handle them how I wanted to. It was comforting to know that it's policy here for everything to be checked over by someone else as it meant I wasn't afraid of a mistake causing a lot of damage.

My degree course is a technical science so this internship won't really assist that at all. However, I have gained valuable skills/insights from working in the office and this experience that I will find extremely useful after university when I will be working. Some of these include understanding how an office is ran, networking and administration skills.

General atmosphere was lovely. It was relaxed in the sense that there would be jokes between us, general chit chat and it was a very positive environment. However there was a very good balance between that and everyone being productive and getting their work done. I couldn't have asked for a better office atmosphere than this one.

I wouldn't say there was much organisation from my experience. They had a rough idea of a few things they wanted me to do at the start but other than that it was very much see what I like and find stuff for me to do based on that. I feel like this suited me very well as it was more flexible what I was able to get up to.

I had standard training modules to complete however I wouldn't say there was that much of an investment into my development - however I decided early on that I was not really enjoying banking as such so it would not have been too effective to invest a lot into me.

I feel like promotion up the ladder would take a long time, it's too slow paced for myself and I don't really have any plans on going into banking at all after university. It's quite a slow pace environment and for me it wasn't intellectually challenging enough for me. I would however be interested in some of the other departments like financial crime or something more analytical than account manager support.

There wasn't any social scene amongst other interns, however I was in a branch far away from the head of region so there wasn't any interns near me. This might be different if you had an internship at one of the branches near head office or head office itself. Almost all the people in the branch were middle aged so there wasn't really a social scene for me there either.

I was living outside of city with some family who live nearby. The area I was in is extremely expensive and I was lucky to have family close by otherwise I would not have made enough money to live in the city over summer on the intern salary. However, if I hadn't had the family near by I would have asked to go to different branches when we were given the options on the interview day.

Given I had no peers in the area, I didn't go out and try the nightlife. However from my knowledge of the city, there's lots of bars and pubs but not a great nightclub scene which is more my preference on a night out. So whilst this may suit some I don't really rate it.

There was a team social one night which was fun. But I had a long commute so it wasn't very feasible for me to do things after work. I also did not know anyone in the area so I did not really get the chance to do much outside of work.