Intern Review

RBS is a great place to work. The work life balance is really good and if you do stay on as a grad there are so many flexible working options. The work is really interesting and you feel as if you are genuinely contributing to the success of the company.

Everyone in my team was really welcoming and treated me as an equal member of the team. As an intern there is obviously a learning curve but from day 1 I was integrated within the team and was included in all projects until I was able to get on with my own work.

The team I was with was really supportive. My direct line manager really supported me with regular feedback on my work and advice on how to improve for the next time. Other members of the team were also really happy to help if I ever had a problem or help on what I was doing.

There were times, particularly to begin with where I didn't have a huge amount to do but for the most part there was always something I could be getting involved with. As you learn how the department works you get trusted with more tasks and responsibility so you are not as reliant on your manager for work.

I was given responsibility from very early on in the internship. To begin with I was supervised a lot with the work I was doing but as the internship went on I was trusted more and more to work independently. The level of responsibility really depends on how well you are able to hit the ground running.

In terms of degree studies there is not huge amount of specific knowledge I gained that will help my course but in terms of soft skills that are developed I think its always really useful to develop them in an actual work environment. The skills I gained will of course be useful moving forward in my future career.

The atmosphere was quite relaxed but there was definitely an understanding that the work had to be done and there were times where the office was very focused on work. But for the most part everyone was very open and more than happy to have a quick catch up or go for a coffee.

The internship was reasonably well organised and very the most part all the important information was communicated to un in a timely manner. It was not always clear hat exactly was expected from us in terms of assessment and sometimes you had to really search out this information but overall most things were communicated to us.

Within my department there was a lot of time spent getting me up to speed with how things were done and giving me the skills I needed to complete the work. On the internship as a whole there was a lot of training but some of it often felt a little pointless.

The company will offer all interns who meet their requirements a grad job at the end of the process. Depending on the department after this the process for post-grad jobs becomes more competitive. Some other departments will offer guaranteed post grad jobs provided you pass all the professional qualifications they require.

There are a lot of intern and grad events here, sometimes they are a little unreliable about promoting them so you sometimes have to really search the events out. But there are plenty of social events happening both out at the campus and in town. Often there are department sp0ecific social events

Edinburgh was reasonably expensive to live in and socialise in however compared to London the cost of living in much cheaper. There is still a commute to work which has to be taken into account when budgeting but realistically this would be the same case living in London and the Tram is quite cheep.

There is a reasonable nightlife in Edinburgh although compared to other cities the nightlife is quite poor. There are plenty of places to go but they tend to be quite expensive (compared to places like Manchester and Glasgow). But overall if you did live in Edinburgh you would not have nothing to do after work.

There are some societies but these are aimed more for permanent employees rather than interns. But if you do join there will be plenty of things to get involved in. There are walking clubs and after work football events. There are even more niche clubs like bee keeping. There are also career focused societies.