Intern Review

I found the insight programme extremely enjoyable. It was well structured, with a nice balance between classroom learning sessions and experience on the desks, there was a lovely company atmosphere and the employees were very willing to talk to interns about their roles, the company and finance in general. Altogether a great experience.

A lot of care was put into creating the insight programme and it was obvious the company was investing in training in the interns as potential future employees. Two weeks isn't long enough to make a major contribution to the company but nevertheless we were allowed and encouraged to get involved.

I was allowed to shadow many different people in a range of roles and received guidance about my career and insights into the world of banking from many of them, the HR department was extremely helpful and friendly and the review process gave thorough, constructive feedback.

My degree is pretty much entirely unrelated to finance, so the insight programme is unlikely to help with my degree, although I'm sure it would have been useful had I been studying, for example, economics or business. The soft skills and sector knowledge I've gained will undoubtedly come in very useful when applying for internships and early-career jobs, though.

The insight programme was very well structured, although not entirely balanced. It was quite heavily geared towards the investment banking side of the firm, which wasn't great for me as I was in global markets, and the schedule tended to change at quite short notice which was sometimes inconvenient, but the changes were communicated pretty effectively.

It was very good - there was a sense of community among the interns and we had time to socialise and get to know the rest of the group and those on other programmes occurring at the same time, but we were also well integrated into desks and the employees were generally accepting and positive towards interns.

I felt that they were investing heavily in us, in terms of training for the specific areas we were based in, and in teaching skills to help us in our early careers.

I felt that I got a very good idea of what it would be like, and the differences between working there as an intern, early career employee and a more senior one, and of the differences between working in different departments. I also got significant advice on how to find a position that was well suited to my personality.

The insight was very useful in understanding the company's culture. We were encouraged to take part in it as thoroughly as possible and I also had various people talk to me about the company culture and 'extracurricular' activities on offer within the firm.

I feel that I'm much better informed now, I'm still not entirely sure what career path I'll end up taking (which isn't surprising, as I was extremely unsure when I started the insight programme) but I now have a lot of the tools to make the right decisions and to get wherever I want to go.

This scheme is paid, and they also offer to reimburse expenses up to £100 for applicants living in the UK (not nearly enough to cover accommodation in London or daily commutes, but it goes some way). The deadline for applying for that is very soon after the interview, though - I didn't have time to book accommodation and travel tickets before the deadline so I missed that reimbursement completely.

Yes, definitely. I spent a lot of time networking but I think I spent less time doing so than a lot of my peers - you end up doing a lot as a scheduled part of the programme, and then you're also encouraged to go and seek out and organise more meetings and networking opportunities by yourself.

Generally very good. They were well organised, well attended by employees including some of the more senior ones, and generally very pleasant experiences. Your experience did rather depend on which employee you ended up sitting next to/talking to most, but a majority of people seemed to end up having productive conversations.

Yes, we did, formally as part of presentations and informally by talking to employees.

Yes, definitely. I would encourage friends to apply to this programme as I believe it is a very good scheme for anyone interested in entering the world of banking. Possibly I wouldn't recommend it to friends with health or mental health issues, as it involves very long working hours and early starts (as is typical in banking).