Commercial Banking Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed it, I was given responsibility from the first day of my internship and the work I did was even included with the analysts/managers stuff. I had a good range of work with the analysts and from other parts of the team- which was nice to work on something completely different. I felt that I was never bored and definitely learnt a lot in a short space of time. Everyone was so helpful if I needed some assistance too.

The team was so nice and inclusive, I really felt like I was a member of the team which was nice. I did feel valued by my colleagues as I would get positive feedback that told me the work I was doing was right. I also liked how they would get me involved with a broad range of projects, so I felt like I could contribute to all of them. We had weekly catch ups and check ins to go over the work, which meant I could keep improving.

I felt that I received a large amount of support and guidance from my manager. We would have catch ups every morning to go over what I had on and if I needed any help with anything. My manager would always be willing to help out or support me with my work. My manager also put me in touch with lots of people from around the team so that I could interact with them, grow my network, and get possible support from them too.

Yes, I was very busy and never bored. There were so many things set for us during our internship, at the start I thought it might be a bit overwhelming, but we soon learnt to manage our time well. Alongside our placement work with our team, there was an intern project where we would research and present on a topic of diversity and inclusion, a challenge to raise money for a charity with a team, volunteering opportunities, and self development learning online.

I feel like I was given a good amount of responsibility, even from the first day of my internship. I was given work by the analysts and my manager that was put straight into credit papers, so I was proud to have done that and learnt a lot from it. I wasn't given too much responsibility to the point I felt stressed, but it was nice actually contributing to the team and helping them out.

As I was so busy, I felt like I learnt good time management skills to juggle all the tasks. I will definitely be able to use this in my degree and further career to juggle projects and not get stuck on just completing one to the end each time. I have learnt to interact and connect with people over Zoom (as my internship was online), to build my network. I hope to stay in contact with the connections I made, which I know will be valuable for my future career.

My internship was online, so I did not get the chance to physically go into the office. I was worried that it would be quite a cold experience and I would be on my own doing work, but I found that I was on a lot of Zoom calls with people, which was nice to have someone to talk to and made the atmosphere a bit nicer. Although, my team were really friendly and fun so I am sure the atmosphere in the office would have been really nice.

The internship was very well set up by the internship programme team and managers. We started with a 2 day induction to get set up and meet everyone, as well as set expectations and go over what we would be doing in the internship. We then started with our team, and this was really well organised as well. It was easy to manage our time with the online calendar to stay organised. Also, the internship team were really in contact with us leading up to our internship, so there were plenty of opportunities to ask questions.

HSBC were really big on personal development on the internship. Before we started, they sent us a link to a load of courses to prepare ourselves for the internship. This was really good to start understanding the key concepts for the placement. During the internship, we were set weekly milestones to do work around and learn from. I would dedicate around an hour of my day everyday for self development and learning on the platform.

I would be very interested in working with HSBC in the future. I really enjoyed meeting all of my team and the other interns, so I would love to come back and have the chance to work with them in the future. I also really liked the culture of the company, they were so big on self development and volunteering, which was really nice. I enjoyed how much we had to do to meet each other, and I think the graduate community would be great.

There was a good social scene among interns, albeit it was mostly over Zoom. We had weekly socials which were all very fun and a good chance to learn more about each other. We had many WhatsApp groups for various different things we were involved with, so we were all very active with talking on those. Some of us interns are planning to meet after our internships, which will be very nice to meet in person after all this time.

No cost as I lived from home.

Worked from home, bars and clubs are mostly shut due to Covid.

Although it was all over Zoom, there were many chances to get involved with activities outside work. As part of one of the projects, we were in teams raising money for a charity. Many teams decided to hold social events, workshops and fitness classes to help raise money. This meant that there was probably at least one event a night to get involved in. This was really nice to meet everyone and get involved in a broad range of things.