Spring intern Review

The insight was a magical week that I will remember all my life. The excellence of the poeple at JPM and the level of the participants of the program were unmachtched by the two other spring weeks I did. No doubt I learned a lot and will hopefully see the poeple again from the program at some point in my career.

I felt highly valued due to the level of trust accorded to our group, we were treated as JPM employees and had freedom to go arround the building. Furthermore, we had access to very senior people in a networking event with MDs. Moreover, the excellent quality of the program contents show how the high amount of work that went into its organization and can be seen as a proxy for the firm's keenness to cater for participants.

At no point did we feel stranded, the poeple guided us very well through the schedule of the program and explanations were extremely clear. This is just another resortissant of the culture of excellence at the firm: the attention to detail and throughtfulness of the people who designed the program was felt.

Skills developped were hard skills such as presentation and more generally communication skills. JPM had some of the best people from Fitch Learning to improve us in this regard in interactive skills sessions. More importantly, the culture of excellence of the firm shines through you when you are there and has inspired my own work ethic and ambition to excellence.

Again the structure was well thought through with breaks at appropriate times (the learning sessions can be quite intensive). There were no blanks in the schedule, there was always a next event to be at. HR were thoughtful of integrating an extensive drinks evening on the first day such that we could create a bond.

A magical atmosphere: we were at the top of the JPM tower in Canary Wharf during most of the program, surrounded by great views of London, modern art paintings by Bacon and Pankhurst, excellent food and amazing people. I think there was a general sense of awe at how lucky we were to be in our positions (probably the effect intended by the firm).

They provided us with the best means to get an exposure to senior people; these can teach you a lot possibly. And skill sessions were a surprise by how good they were. They did their best and it was noticeably better than at other insights. The sense of excellence in the culture of the firm is also conveyed which is very inspirational.

People are often afraid of the working hours and the extent to which the job governs your life, etc. In this program, you have the opportunity to do your research by directly asking the people in these roles, it then depends on your judgement and interpretation of the peoples answers, eg how much information you can get out of them, to really understand the entailments of their job.

It was extremely helpful to get an insight into how people at the top of their industry do things. This gives you an idea of what excellence and thought leadership are, these words cease to be abstract concepts in your head; this is so useful for your career, because you now have an idea of how you can grow in both these regards realistically in your future career, which is an insight few programs can give you.

There were many and they were varied. You get the opportunity to meet people all the way from analyst to MD from all the different divisions. This can be very informative when someone explains you a technicality (after all these people are passionate about their jobs) and it can be very fun, not your their whole lives revolve arround finance and it is interesting to find out what else people do.

I would recommend this insight to anyone. You need not be interested in finance. Once you are in the program you notice: these are poeple who are best at what they do and also great otherwise, they get you when you talk to them,it is very refreshing. I convinced me, whatever my work may be, I always want to work with the best people.