PMO Assistant Review

I have thoroughly enjoyed my internship with Lloyds Banking Group over the summer. Being a part of a company that truly cares about its employees and offers great support in terms of work-life balance as well as development support both from the HR side and the Line Manager. I couldn't have been more pleased to have been a part of developing new processes to make the Lloyds the bank of the future.

The team that I was assigned to have been one of the best part of the internship. We were a very small team of 8 people working in the PMO office. It felt like being a part of a family, everyone was kind and supportive and helped once you had a question and they were willing to listen to your opinions when you thought things could have been done better.

I was given significant support from both my manager and colleagues. I had weekly 1:1 where we discussed and reviewed the week that had passed. These meetings gave me immediate feedback on what I could do better as well as being reminded of all the good things that I am doing. It was really motivating and it kept me pushing throughout my internship.

I was very busy during my internship. I guess this depends heavily on the area that you are in and how well you get a long with your manager. I managed to develop a great trust with my manager and she could see all the work that I was doing in a timely and professional way. Hence, I was given more responsibilities which kept me busy. I also got responsibilities that was outside of my role, which was amazing and rewarding.

I was given a so much responsibilities throughout my internship which was great. I am a person that loves to be kept busy and always have my hands working on things. Because the great relationship and trust that I had with my manager. As well as, my proactive nature of keep asking for tasks and finding tasks on my own. I was busy 99% of the time. My manager told me in the beginning of the internship, that I should feel empowered to do whatever that I feel is right and can be improved and ask for forgiveness if it didn't turn out as I had hoped. This was very inspiring and I kept working by that everyday. It even led me to develop three resource management process that has since been implemented in the company.

I have been thought a lot of new skills during my internship. But most of all I have been able to apply a lot of knowledge from university and now being able to see how it works in reality. Skills like: Project Management Project Governance Resource Management Presentation Skills Project Reporting These skills are going to be transferrable to any company or role that I would want to work with in the future. Truly recommend

The office that I was working from was quite far away from the city that I was located in. The office that I was working from didn't have many interns either. However, the people that was working from my office were very nice and helpful and I felt like I was equal to everyone working there.

The overall work placement have been great. However, there were a few disappointing things happening throughout that was addressed by HR quite late. Especially the part of being informed in the 2nd last week of the internship that the program that I have been a part of does no longer have a graduate scheme, which was communicated upon accepting the offer. I thought this could have been done better and it has caused a lot of stress now. Knowing that you might not be able to come back to the workplace that you have enjoyed being a part of.

LBG invested a lot of resources to help your development throughout the internship. Being given access to Lynda and Skillsoft for free have been amazing. I have managed to learn some new computer programs just by having access to them. There are also endless resources out there on the intranet and within the LBG discovery learning. If you are intellectually curious then the opportunities to learn new things are endless.

I am very appealed to continue my career within LBG. However my programme have been removed for next year and I now have to reapply for another grad scheme which is disappointing. Especially when I have shown excellence and delivered everything to LBG values and standards during my internship. I wished there was a better process for this as I have got the understanding that the program I am applying to know is the same as I have done just a different title. So that has been a bit of a let down, by not feeling secured in terms of employment.

There was a good social scene amongst the colleagues. However, there was no mutual respect from many of them. A lot of partying mid weeks, staying up late, waking up myself and others that where trying to sleep. I felt like there could have been much better organisations on rooms and they should have been based on your age and year at university. Being in flat with 18 year old as a mid 20s is not fun and quite disturbing.

It was very cheap living and socialising in the area that I was based. We were located very centrally with our accommodation and the best part was that LBG was covering our accommodation. Which meant that all of the salary we made we could either spend or save and not having to worry about bills etc.

Nightlife was great, even though I did not part-take in many of them throughout. But I can safely say from the other colleagues that was going at it at least 2-3 times a week. that they seemed to enjoy it. However it came for me at the cost of not getting good sleep due to predrinks and other loud noise activities

There are a lot of opportunities in Edinburgh. If you are a little bit adventurous and sporty. There are many hills and mountains that you can go to. Me and 3 other interns drove up the highlands for one weekend to see loch ness and more and I truly recommend doing these activities.