Summer Intern Review

Overall it was a good experience. The team I was in was extremely friendly and the culture was incredibly supportive and welcoming, hence the overall strong rating. There's a big focus on work-life balance, relatively good pay and some interesting work to do. There wasn't enough work to keep me busy all summer, but if you're proactive you can usually find something to fill your time. The internal learning websites and systems are slightly poorer than those of other companies of a similar size.

While my colleagues in my team were extremely supportive and helpful, due to a small team my managers were often extremely busy, giving me very limited facetime with even my line manager. The difficulty of work and responsibility given was low, and therefore this meant I felt of limited value to the team.

One of my supervisors was extemely helpful in getting me set up and talking me through the responsibilities of the team, though there were infrequent check-ins to see how I was getting on and if I had enough work to do. I saw my actual line manager very-rarely, though our team was under-staffed so she was understandably very busy.

Not very. We had a couple of larger projects which I learnt to fill my time with, though this was the majority of the work that I actually got involved in. My three 'goals' which were set at the start of the internship were unambitious, and so this meant that I had completed two of them 2 weeks into my 10 week internship.

Very little. I think this is a partially a result of the team that I was working in, as every piece of work was different but needed to be completed within a couple of days and to a very high standard. This meant that by the time I had been taught to do it, the work would be completed (and not need to be replicated again in the time that I was doing my internship). Therefore, I was not given responsibility for any of the tasks of the team but given external projects which might help the team if I completed them but had very low levels of risk involved if I completely failed.

I think I learnt a lot in terms of soft skills and being proactive. I learnt limited amounts from my day-role that is transferable, but the HR programme places a big emphasis on developing interns soft-skills in alignment with the company's interviewing practices.

This was a really strong point in my experience. Gogarburn (the HQ) is a fantastic office and almost everyone you meet is extremely friendly and welcoming. While people take their work seriously, there isn't a culture of pushing people past their limits but largely flexible working so long as you get the job done.

It was fairly well organised. HR's input into the internship meant that there were often educational presentations on what the bank is doing and new learning opportunities, though they can only do so much. More could be done to ensure a more joined-up approach between the team and HR.

There were fairly frequent presentations, some of which had reasonable educational content. The way the internship was set up was to push us to develop our soft-skills. I felt the quality of the development opportunities was overall low, even if they did have reasonable frequency.

Within the department I was working in, there was a push towards downsizing more than hiring. This meant that even if in the short-term there are graduate roles there was little long-term potential within that department. Within similar departments to mine there was more career potential. They say there is a high conversion rate of internships to grad roles.

Yes, there was a really good social scene amongst interns. People were out socialising together almost every single evening of the internship, and you could always find people to have lunch with. The only down-side to this is it became a little cliquey, but still overall really strong.

This was mixed. There is a canteen on campus at Gogarburn and the quality of food is really good, however, you pay for what you get. For a lunch to fill me up from there it was on average just over five pounds. This was slightly offset by the fact that there was free coffee from a machine in our department, saving me plenty. Going out to socialise in Edinburgh is expensive, but you can find alternatives.

Within my department, non-existent. However, given my team were all my parents' age, I would neither want nor expect them to go out. At least some of the interns would be out on Friday and Saturday every week.

Yes, there are office sports teams, team lunch-hour runs, meditation sessions and cultural groups. I did not get involved in these myself as I was occupied with other activities, though there was plenty on-offer that came highly recommended from my mates.