Summer Associate Review

I thoroughly enjoyed my internship. Overall it was interesting work, in an extremely supportive environment with a clear and helpful manager. Also I learnt a lot about my team's work, and information about other business areas, which was extremely interesting and helpful.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues. The work I was given felt significant and meaningful, and I was included in all of the relevant discussions. I was also given additional tasks that were important for the delivery of urgent projects, which made me feel included and valued on even the most important of the team's work.

I was given excellent support by my manager. I was managed day-to-day by my team's lead associate, rather than my formal manager, but this arrangement was extremely effective as I could have more contact with the lead associate and discuss my work and other topics in far greater detail. Overall I was given an excellent level of support and guidance.

I was overall given the right amount of work for the time-frame of the internship. As such, my workload was balanced and well managed. However, some of my work had to be completed outside of normal business hours, but this was not excessive.

My amount of personal responsibility was somewhat limited. While I was allowed to make suggestions for how to proceed with my own work, and organise my own time, the work I was doing was closely set by my manager, and al of my work was closely checked before proceeding any further. While this is understandable, it did limit my personal responsibility.

The skills I have developed will definitely assist me in my future career, if not my studies. The main skills I have developed have been professional (e.g. communication) and time-management skills, and these will be essential to my future professional experiences. Additionally, my knowledge of finance and the role of the FCA will be important to my future career plans. However these skills will be less useful in the final year of my undergraduate degree.

Since I was never in the office, my impression of the office atmosphere was what I could garner from my time in discussion with various colleagues from around the organisation. Since almost everyone I spoke to was engaging, interesting and happy to spend time to answer my questions, I have no reason to doubt that the office itself has a great atmosphere. However, I imagine different teams and divisions can be quite isolated from each other, due to their vastly different work.

The internship was overall organised extremely well. In particular considering it was remote, my technology was delivered on time, and was easily accessible. The internship was planned well, with enough time given to business team work, community work and training. While communication from HR could sometimes be a bit clearer, overall it was very well organised.

Overall the FCA provided a great deal of training for us. As well as our own learning pathway that we could complete in our own time, we were provided with 3 hours of 'live' training per week. This is a significant investment that I am grateful for. However, some of the 'live' training I felt was not that applicable to my role and learning goals, and it would be great if we could have expressed an opinion beforehand on what kind of learning topics we would have liked to see. However I recognise this may not be that feasible.

I would very much like to return to the organisation for a graduate position. I cannot speak highly enough about my experience: the work I have done, the team I have been in and the support I have received have all been excellent. I very much hope I can return to the organisation, and progress my career here.

The social scene of this internship were practically non-existent. One social event for interns were organised for our final week, and it is hard to see this as anything other than an afterthought. However, as we were working remotely, during a pandemic, this was entirely understandable. It may be something to consider for next year.

N/A - Working from home.

N/A - Working from home.

N/A - Working from home.