Associate Review

Was particularly tough with Covid and WFH, team tried to adapt it to remote working as best as they could. The work was dry, and I do not think that being there in person would have made much of a difference. Training was okay, but conducted externally, and was not particularly tailored to the organisation as a whole. To enjoy any placement the interaction is key, and WFH made it difficult to build meaningful connection and deep networks

Working From Home made this particularly difficult; being an intern in a team that had a key deadline meant that I was often pushed to the side. I often went out of my way to seek other colleagues within my division and offer my help, however I was often told that it required more skill or that they did not have the time to teach me how to do it. This made the overall interactions with colleagues difficult and often left me feeling not valued by my team.

Working From Home meant that getting support and guidance was very difficult, unlike a traditional office where you can pop over and ask for help, working from home meant that I had to arrange calls for insight (which were often postponed) or send instant messages over MS Teams, these messages were often ignored for hours on end, until getting feedback near the end of the day meaning a hours were left unable to conduct BAU activity.

The level of work set was truly dismal, I would be given 1 case a week, which with proper guidance could be completed in a day. The rest of my week would be spent begging other business leads for work, to be given random scraps of work that often gave no feeling of development or accomplishment - in truth, I was being used as a work horse, rather than an Intern trying to gain insight into the industry and firm.

My work required almost no competence, all I had to do was ensure that I met the deadlines. I was given no autonomy over my work schedule, I would finish a task and wait and wait until I was given something else. I was given no broad objectives and no longer term goals for my work schedule. If I wasn't there, it would not have made a difference, except from some people would have had more work to do.

Absolutely in zero capacity will the work which I did aid me at any point in the future. I am still not sure why I was assigned the team that I was, it made no sense and it did not engage with any of the skills that my degree gave me. Within my team I did not learn/engage any new skills. There was a intern-led community project where I gained insight into research and presentation making, but I do not feel that those were the skills I was looking to foster in the long run from the FCA.

Working From home meant the environment of the office was difficult to gauge. The team seemed to only meet weekly for a weekly catch up, and whilst amicable, there was always a feeling of work first, get to know each other later. Maybe in the true office environment this would have been different, but working from home meant that the environment often felt 9-5 and business orientated. Barring mandatory weekly 1-1 with my line manager, I often felt isolated with no one regularly checking in on my progress or general performance.

The online internship was set up very poorly and felt like they were trying to cobble together their 'traditional' internship and cram it onto an online environment, rather than reviewing how to optimise their work flow to an online environment which welcomes interns. We were given little information about our internship prior to starting, including roles, divisions and key points of contact (even though the internship was delayed 3 weeks). My team in particular felt like they were not expecting an intern and did not know what to do when I showed up as for the first 3 weeks I was given no work - for the first week I was told to just read articles from the FCA internal work portal.

I felt like there was no personal training or development throughout the entirety of my internship. We had weekly, 3-hour, Kaplan training which often felt generic and not targeted towards the interns in particular. The Kaplan training in person would likely be good, but sitting on an online 3-hour training session diminished the value for training topics that were already generic and not targeted to the interns specifically. Online training systems, again, were generic and not focused at personal growth. I didn't feel like my team took the time to focus on my personal development or focus on what I could aspire to over the course of my internship.

I have been told that most interns get offered a graduate placement - placements are decided by your line managers who reflect on your performance during the internship and decide whether to give you a graduate placement. Considering my line manager has failed to contact me, or interact with me, for the final 3 weeks of the internship I do not know their particular feelings towards me, or their thoughts on my performance so future employment prospects are questionable.

There was no social scene in particular, however Working From Home can only hinder the social experience. Within my team there were no external meet ups, or end of week catch ups - there was a professional atmosphere, but not overly intense. Amongst interns there were no meetings/gatherings encouraged by the FCA to try and get us to socialise. The only other interns I got to know were within the mandatory community project, but I would not say that the community project was a great socialising platform.

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