Summer analyst - markets research Review

The people are really lovely and happy to explain stuff despite me coming in with very little knowledge My line manager was friendly, supportive and proactive and always happy to help me or check up on me and he gave good feedback on both what I did well and what I could work on. It was hard work and I think people weren’t too sure how much was appropriate given the truncated internship, but my line manager adapted my goals and aims to account for time spent on more important tasks so I ended up with the right amount of work.

As an intern I couldn’t contribute much to the team in terms of knowledge and obviously didn’t know them as well, especially since we weren’t able to meet in person, but they made me feel welcomed, were always happy to give me time and made an effort to check up on me all despite it being online. I feel like we were able to have some more casual chats as well as chats where I asked questions.

My manager and other teammates were very supportive and provided a lot of feedback throughout the process both during and after projects so that I knew if I was going in the right direction. If I didn’t know something they were always happy to answer questions or explain things. They, along with HR, also made it quite clear what they were looking for and expecting from me right from the start which was really good.

I was very busy especially since the internship was virtual there were a lot of webinars and virtual meetings etc to attend which made it hard to do much work during the working hours. There was also a lot of reading to do, which was made harder by me not being used to financial reports and terminology which made this more time consuming. I also put a lot more work than was perhaps necessary into the projects which took time, especially since I had to learn some new skills like VBA, but I think this was partly because of the truncated time period making it harder to fit the projects as well as other work in.

I didn’t do anything particularly important, although the work I did was somewhat similar to what people normally do in the summer period, but all of the important jobs require more knowledge and skill than I have. The internship focused more on seeing how I coped with work similar to what my teammates normally as well as talking to people and building my knowledge rather than actually eg talking to clients, which I think was probably more beneficial for the role that I was working in.

I think learning a bit more about how to network, especially over online platforms, as well as more technical financial knowledge will be very useful for future careers. In terms of how it relates to my degree It probably won’t have much impact since my degree is unrelated. The excel skills and shortcuts I learnt were quite useful though and I particularly enjoyed working with VBA although my degree doesn’t require so much VBA dexterity.

I didn’t physically go into the office, but even online I could feel that my team had a really good rapport and the more senior staff who gave webinars were also very friendly and able to make the atmosphere of the talks feel more relaxed. There was also a charity event to get involved with and I could see that the senior management was at least making some effort to address current social issues even before they became mainstream.

The internship was pretty well organised given it was the first online internship HR had run. There were a lot of online resources to help us manage our time and see what talks were available. The issues were one time there was a talk I wanted to go to that clashed with one of the compulsory talks for all interns which seemed to be rather poor timetable has but other than that there were no other organisation issues apart from a mistake in the groups for the training sessions.

They had pretty much all the senior staff give us webinars where questions could be asked and arranged smaller group meetings with very senior members of my particular division so people were very willing to give time to talk to us. On a lower level as well people were always happy to give me time and answer questions and there were a few training sessions arranged to introduce us to basic topics as well as prep work which I found very useful and a week of training prior to starting work on the desks.

Although we were initially sceptical that the intake would be the same as normal years, I was surprised to see how much emphasis the higher management put on making sure to recruit as normal despite the worsening economy and people were also good at telling us why that was important. Although I’m not sure about “there’s as many places as there are good candidates” due to eg headcount for individual teams, they definitely seemed to be prioritising hiring interns and it seems this years intake was also very good.

The social scene was very limited this year because of everything being virtual, but the organisers still put a lot of effort into trying to arrange socials as best they could for the interns, although I think we really missed the chance to build really strong connections. My team was also very good at arranging meetings for me to meet everyone on the team together as well as people from other teams and my own being happy to spend time to have one on one video calls with me.

N/A: I worked from home and there was no in person socialising but I imagine London is normally pretty expensive for interns

N/A: I worked from home

There was the charity event and some online socials; I think in normal times there would have been a lot more of those to get involved with. There were lots of webinars and talks by the business resource groups which aim to support various minority groups such as Black and LGBT+ communities so it was pretty easy to sign up to and find out more about those as well as some events to attend run by them.