Finance for non-finance spring week Review

The entire week was a very enjoyable experience. The structure of the spring week made it very easy to meet new people and make friends. Moreover, the week itself was very interesting and provided a valuable insight into J.P.Morgan and the world of finance.

I felt very valued during my week at J.P.Morgan. Not only were we allowed and encouraged to network and converse with a number of high profile and I’m sure incredibly busy employees, but also the staff made every effort to pamper us and make us feel welcome. They constantly provided us with food and snacks. They even hired out an entire bar with free food and drinks on the first night.

With finance being a fairly specialised subject the skills and information I learnt are not directly relevant to my non-finance degree. Despite this, the sessions held on matters such as interview and presentation skills, as well as, the opportunity to develop my teamwork skills through the planned activities will definitely help in both my degree and later life.

The insight week was extremely well structured. We got given a clear plan of the activities and lectures we would be attending in the week on day one and this was followed precisely all week. However, it would have been nice to receive an exact timetable prior to our arrival.

The general atmosphere was incredibly welcoming and friendly. Going into it I was worried that there would be a very competitive atmosphere, however, I could not have been more wrong. The staff also made sure that if we had any issues we could voice it with them.

In regards to this, I cannot fault J.P.Morgan. Everyday we received talks and presentations from high level employees, as well as, lectures and incredibly useful summaries of the different aspects of finance from independent external companies. J.P.Morgan has even gone the extra mile by providing us with video lectures by one of these external companies over summer to both reinforce and further our financial knowledge.

The insight week was very useful in teaching us about the different areas of finance and what different jobs entailed. This was compounded by the numerous networking events with a number of different divisions within J.P.Morgan. Despite this, we were not allowed to shadow workers. I believe this would have allowed me to obtain more of a first hand understanding into what different jobs entailed.

A lot of the people we spoke to were more than happy to talk to us about the culture at J.P.Morgan (some even talked about it during their presentations to us). From what I’ve been told it sound brilliant.

The content was extremely useful in helping me decide on my future career path because it gave me an insight into the world of finance and specific divisions that I didn’t previously have. Networking events were particularly useful.

This question is not applicable to me because I lived in London and therefore commuted to J.P.Morgan’s Canary Wharf office at little personal expense. However, the company did provide us with free food and drinks for the whole week.

There were networking events with company employees most days. Moreover, many employees took the time out of their day to come and present to us about their specific line of work. It is worth noting that the ratio of employees to springweekers was very good at networking events as you could frequently have one-on-one conversations.

The networking events were very good. They had loads of employees from many different divisions meaning you could talk to them one-on-one.

On the first day we had a talk addressing activities that employees could get involved in outside of work. Moreover, employees would happily talk about this at networking events. For example, one employee was telling me about his divisions football team.

Yes, I would recommend this insight week to a friend. The week was incredibly useful in giving me a broad knowledge and understanding about finance, something I didn’t previously have. I found it to be very useful.