Customer solutions - commercial banking intern Review

I felt that, given the short time the company had to organise a virtual experience, they excelled in giving us the best overview of the bank that they could. Within the general intern weeks, I found the development sessions helpful, bringing in external companies to teach us how to grow as individuals was good, and I enjoyed the break out rooms and getting to know other interns. Also, the smaller coffee session within the commercial banking week was a helpful way to ask all of the questions we needed to.

I spoke to a lot of graduates outside of the panels and general discussions and all of them were extremely willing to help. This made me feel like they were open to accepting new people into the business and gave us their time as they felt it was worth their while to educate us on their specialities. The early careers team also put in a lot of effort to organise the internship which made me feel a part of the business.

The early careers team responded to emails quickly, so any issues that anyone had were quickly resolved. If you needed support then they were always happy to help or reassure. They were accepting of external factors, such as hospital appointments, which ended up getting in the way of some of the sessions, knowing that health is the most important thing. I also relied a lot on my buddy for guidance and she was extremely helpful.

I feel that the personal skills that I developed will be extremely helpful in the future. My skills in networking are greatly improved which I know will help me in a professional sense. The information I learned will also hopefully help me in my future career. The general overview we got of the bank was important as a lot of areas were covered broadly, however the closer view of commercial banking helped understand it a little more in depth, and I feel that both of these things will be useful.

The internship ran smoothly, there were rarely issues with the zoom calls or meetings. There was an event timetabled in for every day which kept schedules busier. I enjoyed the external events that were organised for us to complete in groups with no one from the bank leading. This improved interpersonal skills and allowed us to meet other interns. I understand that having interns all over the world made it difficult to organise lots of sessions but felt that the team did well to work around this.

It proved difficult to get through everyone's questions, if you weren't quick enough to raise your hand then you wouldn't get to ask. This meant that often the same people had their voices heard. I also think that the vast quantity of people on the zoom calls made it quite intimidating, smaller groups may have been preferable, although again I understand that bank colleagues are busy and don't necessarily have time for giving multiple talks to interns.

Given the coronavirus crisis, the company seriously invested in the future by continuing with the internship. While a lot of companies are laying off staff, we were brought in and paid as normal, which I greatly appreciated.

I feel that it was helpful to get an insight into banking in general, but I am still a little confused as to what is involved in the multiple roles we heard about, on a day to day basis. I think this is due to the fact that we didn't get the chance to spend more than a couple of hours on each department of commercial banking and the bank in general - had the internship been 10 weeks as it should have been then this would have been different.

Everyone that I spoke to was incredibly happy to help me and answer my questions, which shows off the company's great team culture and encourages me that I would be welcome in the future. I think that the bank has a much more personal culture than a lot of others.

I found the content hugely more interesting than I expected to, hence am inspired to continue in this line of work in the future. Everyone that I spoke to loved the company and their job and I'm sure I would too!

While there were chances to network between interns, I felt that it was left up to us to network further. I found that I had the confidence to reach out to the current graduates to ask them questions and advice, but felt that I was scared to ask other employees. This is a characteristic that I would like to develop in myself in the future, however.

The intern games night organised by interns was a great event. I found it helpful to get to know a few other people and think that the bank could organise something like this in the future.

There are a lot of councils outside of work, and all of them seem to cover interesting and pertinent topics.

It was a great way of finding out more about banking and the bank itself, and I found it very rewarding, as it helped me make my mind up about my future.