Global Markets Summer Intern Review

Really amazing experience! An absolute credit to everyone who managed to organise the first virtual internship at Nomura. I can say that I absolutely loved it and thought that the experience was not brought down by the fact it was virtual. Everyone made such an effort to help the interns throughout the 5 weeks and I learnt an incredible amount in the short time. Weekly presentations made it possible to get to know the other interns and speak to many areas of the business.

The support from members of the business was amazing. Whoever I spoke to I felt welcome and felt as though they genuinely wanted to help. Reaching out to people in a virtual environment is definitely more difficult than in person, however this was made much easier by the fact that everyone at Nomura was completely open and offered so much guidance. The group projects with other interns also meant that we built relationships with each other and that made the experience even more enjoyable.

The support and guidance from my supervisors was far more than I could have expected. We had multiple training sessions which were so helpful. They took lots of time out of their day to talk to us and teach us as much as possible. We were always welcome to ask questions and they would always try to have a call to discuss any issues we had to make sure we understood all the teachings. I have learnt far more than I expected to during the 5 weeks of the internship.

Overall, the balance was good. During the start of the internship it was difficult to strike a balance between various pieces of work we were set. For example, with the group projects interns tended to spend a lot of hours perfecting these and researching the information at the same time as doing desk work. However, as soon as the business was made aware of this struggle they spoke to our desks and made sure that we had the right balance.

In terms of responsibility it was difficult for them to give us too much resposibility since we were in a virtual environment and so couldn't have any confidential information. Despite this however, we had lots of opportunities to show how much we had learnt. We had weekly presentation briefs which allowed us to use our initiative and decide how we wanted to go about the project within our separate groups which was good in a way of allowing us independece.

I believe the skills we learnt will 100% help me in my future career. I went into the internship with no experience in financial markets and have come out feeling far more knowledgeable. The many theory sessions we did with the desk were really helpful for this. I also feel like the presentations have given me really useful experience in public speaking and being able to confidently answer difficult questions without panicking. There were also lots of opportunities to get further help and training which was useful.

This was Nomura's first virtual internship and given that I couldn't fault it. Everything ran smoothly and at no point did I feel disadvantaged for being at home and not in the office. The many video calls we had were all really useful and smoothly conducted. We could still ask all of our questions and meet people from across the business which I think was really important. The external online training we had was also really great.

In terms of future employment prospects, I look forward to being given the opportunity to work for Nomura on a permanent basis. I would love to be a part of the team in my future career. The sense of the culture within the business I got just from a virtual internship shows how strong it is and how important it is to everyone there. I feel that the experience I gained in the past 5 weeks will allow me to start on a great level.

Since the internship was virtual it was difficult to have a real social scene as we were spread out around different areas. Depsite this, we had plenty of opportunities to meet other interns with our weekly projects and various social calls. This allowed us to build more of a relationship outside of a purely work based one. It also allowed us to work really well together within our groups each week and reach out to various desks.