Graduate candidate Review

It was enjoyable. Students from various background came to the event. The event was well organised but it felt like the HR team had seriously cut corner for the event. The professionals who came to give an idea about the work were giving away a sales pitch about the work.

As a candidate, they are happy to answer every question you have in mind. There was a question and answer session after each presentation. Many people were asking queries related to the job and many over smart people were trying to ask many technical questions in an attempt to baffle or maybe impress the panel. My recommendation please don't act smart. Mostly all the people in the room are. You are no exception.

The support with regards to the routine that had to be followed was commendable. Cheers to the organisers. It went smooth. On the other guidance from employees was pretty straight forward. You ask them anything and they one answer, INTERNSHIP. I was expecting to learn something more other than what I could I have learned from a simple google search.

This can vary from person to person depending on what kind of background you have. I saw people who had non-finance/economics background being excited about every little thing. On the other hand for someone who has been applying to positions quite a while and has friends/family working in the financial sector they wouldn't learn anything new and life-changing.

The program was very well structured. The timeline clearly gave you an account of your whole day so that you know what to expect in the next couple of hours. The only thing I wished is that they should have provided the list of attendees from the M&G office beforehand so that students could have done some research and hence could have a better chat with the fellows from the office.

Energetic. This was bound to be a room full of 120+ people where the median age was 21. The room was bustling with energy to the point people being so much involved with the trading exercise that they were having arguments about the constituents of the portfolio. It was amusing.

A small attempt to give a taster about how portfolio construction worked was set up. This game was a bit weird. But considering the fact that it would have been impossible to arrange all the real tools for that huge number of participants, I would say for someone oblivious to stock picking will enjoy the activity.

The insight day gave a very clear idea about the role that a candidate will have, but the employees quite frequently quoted that no day was the same and different kinds of responsibilities were given on a day to day basis. Which quite wasn't inline to the activities on the insight day.

A senior and junior associates were sharing jokes on stage. That looked pretty genuine. So I reckon that the culture is definitely friendly. During the lunch, I got the opportunity to interact with a fund manager who was so fond of the culture that he worked for more than 31 years for the company.

Pretty insightful but not valuable. Don't be a fool in blindly believing everything that is been said by anyone. Do your own research. Consider this to be a compass showing the direction but not the distance. A more transparent guideline has to be mentioned. An emphasis was made that you don't have to have a background in finance which I beg to differ with.

It is too much to expect the company to reimburse you for the expense. I met people who came all the way from Liverpool to attend the event. For candidates like these, it will cost the company a huge chunk of money. You need the job so you have to bear the cost.

Yes, during lunchtime we were joined by a huge group of current employees. Most of them were very welcoming. They were happy to discuss all the topics related to the markets and politics. But I recommend do your research and preferably talk to them about their interest outside of work. This will help you break the ice, easily.

It was good. The space was too small. People were constantly bumping into one another. I suppose it was meant to be a speed networking event as we just had one hour for it. Hence you have to be really specific about who you want to talk to. Check the list of attendees given in the morning and mark your target.

Yes. They too have a life outside of work. Talk to them about that has nothing to do with the yield curve, office and job. This puts them at ease and makes the conversation more fluent. I discovered that many people had the love from travel and even one of them took off one year to do a roadtrip in America.

If have no idea about asset management please do attend. If you are aware of the work and opportunities stay back and keep applying for jobs. There is a lot to learn if you are just starting out to decide if a career in asset management is for you or not.