Planning Team Review

I enjoyed the insight as I was allowed several broader opportunities to get a taste of how different functions in Lloyds Banking Group come together in order to form the wider company. This kind of opportunity was not, however, available on a day to day basis with my team - I found that I knew more about the wider company than my team.

This score has only been given due to the fact that my team operate on quite a specialised level. It was hard to contribute to the team as I didn't have the relevant skills. Furthermore, I built a strong relationship with my Line Manager and the other graduate intern but felt distant to the rest of the team.

My line manager was incredibly patient and always willing to acknowledge that I was new to finance and would require support. I also knew that if I needed help then the graduate intern would be on hand. The only slight issue was that if these two people were not there then the rest of the team found it difficult to provide me with any tasks,

I don't think my skills will help me in my degree studies as I am a humanities student. As the software used by my team is extremely specialised I don't think I will implement the skills I learnt on it beyond. I did however develop a range of soft skills that are always useful: chairing a meeting particularly helped.

I think this is what led to my internship not being as fulfilling as it could have been - the work I had to do was ad hoc and as a result there would be times where I wouldn't have much to do. A long project or sections of work could have perhaps helped with this issue.

I am aware that this is quite rare - my other friends who are interns in this company reported that their teams were quite lively and that mine had a reputation for being quite dull. I found that I had the most stimulating time when shadowing other teams within the business.

I felt that it was acknowledged that I would benefit from shadowing other teams and Lloyds were incredibly helpful in organising a trip to London in order to provide for this. They are keen to make the internship as beneficial as possible for the interns, even though this was a cost to the business.

This placement helped me to understand the more logistical element of what it means to be an employee at Lloyds. I saw that the agile working system is very valued by my colleagues and as a result it s a company who are very keen to be flexible around their employees.

As previously mentioned, I feel as though my experience isn't an appropriate measure of the company culture as a whole expect on the basis that they are very concerned with tailoring the experience so that it benefits your personal development as much as possible, for example when they organised my travel and shadowing placement to London.

I know that I do not wish to pursue a career in Finance and this internship helped me to decide this. I am very grateful for the skillset that I honed here but I do not wish to engage with this kind of work in the future and I am glad that I did the internship so I could confirm this.

I got my wage every single week and was reimbursed for work related costs such as travel and accommodation when I was doing my shadowing placement in London. As a paid intern it was a very financially productive use of my summer. The reimbursement process was easy and I was supported by my line manager.

There were plenty of opportunities to meet other employees as I was given opportunity to shadow Large Corporates in London who were very willing to host me and I organised a series of 1-2-1's with people from all the different areas within Large Corporates. I am very grateful for this opportunity.

As I have said I had to seek out the networking opportunities myself but Lloyds banking Group were more than happy to help me during this process. There weren't social events for networking but rather you could network yourself by shadowing a different team. In this way the company facilitated networking.

I didn't at all - my relationship with most of my team was quite transactional and there wasn't much of an opportunity to socialise as they were mostly too busy doing their work. For this job role, however, I don't believe that external activities are that relevant or necessary so I can understand why I wasn't told about them.

I would but I would recommend that they did a lot of research as to what kind of team they will be in. I thoroughly enjoyed my last internship in this company as it was in a different department and one that could accommodate an intern with less difficulty than this one.