RBS Technology Intern Review

It's been great so far, the work environment is quite casual, as long as you get on with your work pretty much anything goes. The work is interesting in the sense that you are working towards an end goal, i.e. some sort of project completion, this gives you something to aim for.

My colleagues were very friendly and welcoming, I don't think I've ever met a group of such inclusive friendly people especially in the workplace. They were also very very helpful, if i ever have any issues then I have great confidence that if i ask them for help they will go out of their way to ensure my issue is resolved, even if that involves finding someone else who might be bale to help me if they don't know the answer themselves.

Support and general guidance was always available and I know that if I ever feel I need more then I just need to ask. My line manager set up weekly meetings with me to track my progress through the internship and insure that any issues I might have had were never left.

Once the internship got into the swing of things the workload started to pick up. Initially I didn't have much to do after all the introduction material. But I just fed this back to my manager and he ensure more work was pushed my way by the team. The work i was doing was real work for the project and helped to make me feel like i was really contributing to the team.

I wasn't given that much responsibility really, some of the tasks I was completing were actually being used to forecast costs and spending for the project so there was a level of responsibility associated with that but I always knew everything I completed would be checked over and feedback provided, that was actually quite reassuring actually.

The skills I've picked up with respect to project management will really help me next year in my final year project and in an engineering university society where I will be leading in a management role next year. The other soft skills I've picked up such as people skills and how to conduct myself in an office environment will also be invaluable as i go forward into the world of work.

The office atmosphere was chirpy, everyone was generally happy to be there and friendly socialising happened throughout the day. even if you leave your office for lunch or for a coffee you see people light up as they see other friends and colleagues from around he office. its reassuring to know that the people who have worked here for years are still enthusiastic coming into work.

There was quite poor communication at the start of the internship, I wasn't sure exactly what was happening during the first week until a week or so before the start date, however at least I knew when the start date was unlike some other companies that offered me internships this year. Once things got started though it was organised better than average I would say however not seamless.

The training I completed was mostly all centred around the work load, so this included completing industry relevant online internal training modules like you might expect to complete in most job on-boarding days.One of my managers has a particular interest in mental health and was very proactive in getting everyone he could involved and spreading awareness, this involved doing a "mental health 1st aid" training session. There was also some general research, report writing and presenting skill development activities built into the internship structure.

I think there is a good chance I will be offered a job here, I've enjoyed my time here so far and i think i have added value to the team i have been working with. The graduate scheme looks particularly attractive and I will be aiming to secure a position on it.

Yes, all the other interns were very social and always organising and doing things. There were some activities organised by RBS that everyone went to but the interns also went out of their way to organise things to do almost every evening that anyone was invited to. There were group whatsapp and facebook chats that everyone kept informed in.

It's Edinburgh... so it's quite expensive. I live in Glasgow so I've had to commute to the RBS head office next to Edinburgh airport. This got quite expensive in travel costs. However once I got started i was able to set up access to a spoke site in Glasgow and work from Glasgow 2 days a week, this helped the wallet quite a bit. However due to travelling from and living in Glasgow it was expensive to socialise in Edinburgh after work.

There are plenty of good bars and clubs in Edinburgh, however I didn't get the opportunity to take that much advantage of them. I would say that Glasgow's nightlife is better though. So if you were picking where you work based on nightlife then Glasgow is definitely the place you want to be.

There were some internship social activities organised every couple of weeks or so but otherwise there wasn't much for us to really get involved with. My team have discussed going out for drinks sometime but we haven't made it out yet. I've heard there is football played occasionally and there are all some good tracks you can use for running around the office.