Operations Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my virtual internship despite a few tech struggles in the very beginning. I liked that we did not focus only on our team activities and the Early Careers team organised a wide range of events which allowed me to meet people from other teams and to find more about how the bank operates. I also feel that I am more confident in reaching out to people thanks to the virtual internship. However, as we have not been in an office, it can be quite difficult sometimes if you want to shadow someone from a different team.

I felt that I was part of the team I worked in and that my opinions were taken into account.

I felt very supported towards the virtual internship. The Early Careers Team was always there to answer to my questions whenever I had something to ask. My line manager set clear objectives at the beginning of the internship and the weekly meeting gave me the opportunity to address any concerns I might have had. The fact that my line manager assigned a team buddy to me that was always there to answer my questions was also really helpful. Apart from the team buddy, I also had the internship buddy with which I could have more informal conversations and who gave me valuable advice.

The skills that I developed throughout the internship will definitely help me in my degree studies and beyond. I have improved my communication and presentation skills which are essential in the academic environment. I also learnt how to think more outside the box and this is a very useful skill especially given the fast pace with which things change nowadays.

Overall the virtual internship was structured well. Some of the days were more quiet than the others and in some of the days I had hardly any time to effectively work on the tasks assigned by my team. But this schedule helped me understand how important is to manage my time efficiently.

All the people that I came across this virtual internship proved to be very approachable and friendly. However, it can be a challenge to recreate the atmosphere that you would normally expect to have in an office-based internship virtually.

I had lots of training sessions throughout the internship which helped my development both from a personal and a professional perspective. They definitely went above and beyond to offer us a very insightful experience.

The virtual internship gave me a really good insight of the working environment, of the main processes in my team and also provided me a good understanding of the bank overall. Due to the short period of the internship, I worked more on a specific project and did not fully engaged in the daily activities of my team.

The virtual internship gave me a really good understanding of the company culture and I was very happy to discover that their values are embedded in everything they do.

Yes, there were a lot of networking sessions organised by the early careers team and I was also able to reach out directly to the people I wanted to talk to as everyone was very approachable.

It can be quite difficult in the beginning to attend a social event virtually, but I tried to make the most out of those events.

Yes, there are lost of opportunities for the employees to get involved in outside of work. Some of those opportunities were advertised to the interns from the first week of internship. We also had a lot of event with different societies throughout the internship and during my 121 with different employees I was also told about a wide variety of activities they got involved in.

Yes, I would definitely recommend this virtual internship to anyone as I learnt so many things, developed my soft skills and got to know many amazing people.