Spring Insight Review

People were great. Got an insight into all areas of the bank rather than just one. Talking to employees at network sessions was very easy, they were all happy to answer any questions and go beyond. They were honest about their jobs, down to earth and encouraged us to apply.

We were treated very nicely, great food every day (especially for our networking drinks where we were served wine/beer and top quality hot food. Very senior people (e.g Executive Director of investment banking) in the firm took significant time out of their day to come and speak to us with great enthusiasm.

For the first two days we had a professional education provider for top investment banks explain to us in detail all of the functions of an investment bank so that we understood how all of the different divisions interact before we listened to the speakers for the individual divisions. This meant we were given a thorough understanding of the entire bank. We were encouraged to ask questions at any point.

We were given several activities to do as individuals and as groups. Individual assignments such as the Global Markets case study taught us to sift through lots of information quickly, highlighting key points and summarising succingtly. This is useful at university when reading through large text books etc. Case studies taught teamwork and analysing information quickly.

We had one day per division plus the first day which was a general introduction to the programme plus an informative presentation about the bank as a whole and the various divisions. This gave us a good platform of knowledge heading into the following days so that when we listened to presentations about specific divisions we understood them in the context of the bank as a whole.

Everyone was very friendly and easy to get on with. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly we all became good friends. It made the early mornings easier. Everyone was really enthusiastic and passionate. Even though we knew we were being assessed, there was no intense competition, everyone did their best and was friendly.