GTB - Business Planning Review

I enjoyed my placement a lot, the work was very interesting and I felt as though it was important to the company. The work environment was very good and I almost always had something to do, which was very varied. Over the 10 weeks, I learned a lot of skills that I wouldn't have got from uni

I definitely felt valued, everyone always made time for me when I had questions and they made an effort to give me work that would be interesting. People outside of my team also took time out of their days to teach me a bit about their jobs which was very helpful

My supervisor was very good, he made sure that we had a meeting at least once a week to discuss how the internship was going and what could be done to achieve the goals I laid out at the beginning. Also when he was away, he made sure to get me an interim line manager so I could continue to get good guidance in his absence

Most days I was very busy, especially after the first week when most of my time was spent getting used to things. Whenever I didn't have much to do, I could ask people in my team, who would either find me something useful to do or something good to read. I also had a long-term project that I could work on in my free time

A lot of the work I did was related to very important projects, so any major oversights could have consequences for the overall project although most of what I did was looked at before being put into important presentations or excel documents. I had certainly not expected to be involved in such important projects

Before coming, I thought I knew most things about Excel and Powerpoint, but I quickly found out that this wasn't the case. Over these 10 weeks, I have become very good at using Pivot Tables and 'Index Match' in Excel and have learnt how to accommodate different styles in Powerpoint. I also learned a lot when it came to interacting with other colleagues, I went to countless meetings and had active roles in many of them. These will all be invaluable in most banking related jobs

The atmosphere was great, everyone was very friendly to me and each other and the Managing Director was very polite to the team, even in stressful situations. Every Friday people were allowed to come in wearing casual clothing and when the weather was really hot, we were given free ice cream

We were given some pretty useful information before actually starting the job and the opportunity to chat to our line managers, which was great. Unfortunately, we were only told that the referral process had significantly changed in week 8. Whilst this may have been due to the Economic climate, it would have been nice to have at least been warned before the internship

I think that the company did a fair bit. There were a few training exercises for us to do and a lot of videos for interns and colleagues to watch in order to get a fuller picture of what the company does. However, I think that most of the investing came from the employees rather than the company itself

Hard to say at the moment

It was pretty good, us interns organised a few events, although usually last minute. The biggest social highlight was a boat party organised by some of the grads which went up and down the Thames and was a great opportunity to meet all the interns across the bank. Everyone I know enjoyed it

Our accommodation was paid for us by Lloyds which was fantastic. Otherwise rent would have been incredibly expensive. Food isn't much more expensive than the rest of England. Socialising can be very expensive though.

Being in London, you have the opportunity to do whatever you want so long as you have the money to do so. For those who drink, bars and clubs can be unbelievably expensive and entry fees are far higher than I was used to, but this is the case for most of London (particularly central)

There was certainly time to do activities outside of work, at least where I worked, there was very little pressure to work beyond 5pm. However Lloyds didn't really organise many out of work activities whilst I was there, although I was aware of a sports event a few weeks after the internship ended