Technology summer analyst Review

It was a bit strange doing everything virtually but I had lots of meetings and stayed in continual contact with my team and my line manager. It was frustrating not having the right logins/passwords and setting up the VPN and all that, but once I was in I've had a great time. Getting to know the other interns was harder virtually than it would have been in person, and it was a shame to miss the in-person team events.

Definitely! I was given a project of my own to do, and I really enjoyed having responsibility for that. I knew that my contribution was valuable because it was getting something done that the team really needed but didn't have to capacity to do. The project I was on wasn't top-secret and if I made a mistake then it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I think it genuinely will make a difference!

The early careers team set up lots of official training sessions: speaker series with people from high up in the company, soft skills development sessions and panels with recent graduates. Also we all had access to some really cool online learning platforms - I would have liked to have more time to make use of this, because there's lots more that I'd like to learn but just didn't quite have the time to do so.

An internship definitely boosts employability, and the skills I've developed (like communication, stakeholder management, solving disagreements with effective compromises) are ones that I would have struggled to pick up over the course of my degree. One thing that will definitely help is the ability to write succinct emails: I'm convinced that this will make it easier to organise things because people will be more likely to reply to me quickly if what I've said is really clear.

I had really well-defined objectives and clear goals and timelines for my work. Sometimes the early careers speaker sessions were added to our calendars in a slightly ad-hoc way, which made it tough to plan things at times, but mostly things worked out ok. My team had daily "stand-up" meetings where we discuss what we're going to do and summarised the day before, and I found that helped to give me a sense of focus.

Working from home during lockdown is tough!! It was really frustrating not being able to meet up with my friends easily and at times I felt a bit isolated, especially when my business Skype account broke. However the actual people on my team were really lovely - remarkably open and friendly and it was a pleasure to work with them. I can definitely see myself coming back for the grad scheme - that would be cool!

Surprisingly a lot! The placement was only 6 weeks long but we had access to some heavy duty personal development platforms and I'd really like to take time to make more use of that. In addition my team got me a laptop to use (I will have to send it back, unfortunately) because some of the software only really works on a Mac. A lot of my time was spent in speaker sessions and development!

I definitely got a sense of the values of the company and the actual work that I did was pretty much the same as what I would have been doing were I there in person. My role would have been in Northampton so obviously the virtual experience doesn't really show me what it's like to live there, but I did get a sense of the atmosphere which was good. I spoke to lots of graduates too.

We had lots of training sessions especially at the start on the company values, and all of our objectives are measured against those values so it really is a case of actually embodying all that good stuff instead of just claiming that's what it's like because it looks good on the website. My team really cared about me and had a genuine interest in seeing me develop as a person, not just an intern or a prospective graduate.

Very helpful. I wouldn't have considered a role in banking/finance had I not done this internship. The company is SO vast and there are so many possible roles I just had no idea. I'm doing a physics degree and couldn't imagine which role would suit me best but the recruitment team managed to pick one out for me which has suited pretty well. Things might change by this time next year, but I'm much more open to finance now.

Plenty!

Not that great. Socialising virtually is tough.

there are loads of things you can do outside your day job.

good thing to do with a summer, particularly since not much else is possible!