Summer Intern Review

I thoroughly enjoyed the programme. It was fascinating to learn and take part in what the FCA does. I really liked working as a team with other interns on the community project. I found the training to help me develop my own skills. Furthermore, the opportunity to network was great. I met some people who were really generous with their time and offered valuable advice. Many were keen to stay in touch. Overall it was a great experience

I felt very valued. Notably I was given a huge amount of support to help combat an early health issue I had. My line manager was incredible with listening and implementing my needs. For example she arranged really insightful shadowing sessions and put me in touch with people I was interested in. Furthermore the feedback from business tasks helped me feel like I was contributing. Talking to others, I get the impression the FCA really values their employees.

I received a great deal of guidance. My line manager took the time to answer all my questions leading to some really interesting conversations. I was directed to reading materials to help my understanding. Addtionally there was a great deal of guidance in my personal development. I had some very detailed and rewarding conversations about my strengths and development areas. Often these were on topics I had not thoroughly considered beforehand and so were highly beneficial.

I feel like the skills I learned were helpful for my studies and beyond. I developed a lot of confidence in being able to work as a team to deliver a complex project and was shown what good leadership looked like. My research skills and confidence to gather information from conversations with specialist people were greatly improved upon. The content I looked at was incredibly interesting, however I don't think it is highly relevant to the content of my degree.

I thought the experience was relatively well structured. The general focus on business tasks, a community project and training served it's purpose. I thought the community project and business tasks created a really good balance between working with FCA colleagues and with other interns. It meant each was a refreshing experience respectively. I feel the training could have been left out of the week during which we presented our community projects as time was relatively scarce.

I felt the general atmosphere during the programme was fun on the whole. The work at the FCA is very important and noble in it's objectives and this made the common goal feel worth working towards. The business team I was a part of were incredibly inclusive and made me feel a part of it despite only being there for a short time. Getting to know the other interns was also really fun and there was a mutual sense of achievement and team spirit by the end of the programme.

I felt the company invested a great deal in me. There were plenty of Kaplan virtual training sessions. These were on communication, self-management, presentation, decision making etc. Being trained by a qualified professional was really helpful and they encouraged a lot of engagement through out the process. I also felt there was a lot of investment in the community project, as these were not implemented and meant to help us develop our delivery and teamwork skills.

I feel like the virtual experience was valuable in understanding what a full time role in the company, however there were limitations. I was able to gauge what the work was like from the business tasks. I was able to see what the FCA did and how they did it. However I was not able to see how this was done in an office environment, with this being significant to networking and moving around the building.

I felt the experience was extremely helpful in understanding the company culture. I was able to talk about this directly with my line manger. Furthermore I could experience it with team meetings. It was interesting to see how the culture/communication differed with different levels i.e senior leadership versus associate level. By talking to a variety of people I was able to see the types of person the FCA employed and it made me excited at the prospect of working there.

The content was really valuable in helping me decide on my future career path. I was able to see what the different areas involved such as operations and strategy. The latter proved to be really interesting to me and with help from my line manager I was able to see that strategy based roles would suit my strengths. As such it has given me a good sense of direction in terms of the type of role I would like to pursue.

I felt there were plenty of opportunities to network and meet other FCA employees. It was made very clear that it was worthwhile to just contact those who worked in areas you were interested in to see if you could chat about what they do. While not every single reach was met with a response, those that did proved very insightful and friendly. A lot of them made sure to stay in touch after the programme ended.