Summer Analyst Review

Despite being conducted entirely virtually (due to COVID-19), I thoroughly enjoyed the internship. The team was very friendly, I was given lots of responsibility, and I was kept busy the whole time. It was disappointing that I was unable to meet the rest of the team, but this was completely understandable from R&Co's point of view and I feel the firm did a great job of keeping us engaged and making sure everything ran smoothly.

I felt very valued by my colleagues who were always keen to provide me with work, give sound advice and even participate in a daily fundraising quiz that the office interns organised to ensure we stayed in touch with the whole team! I was always given extensive feedback for the work I did, meaning I was constantly able to learn and develop, tapping in to the knowledge and experience of the rest of the team.

Support is mainly provided through your assigned "buddy" and "mentor". My buddy was an analyst working in the same team, and provided a great deal of support in helping me settle in, supporting with my day-to-day work and answering any trivial questions. My mentor was a director at a different office, and was there to provide a different point of contact and perspective if I had any problems I wanted to discuss. Both were very useful and I never felt that I didn't have anyone to speak to if I had an issue.

I was extremely busy throughout the internship, which was a positive surprise as I thought there may have be a chance I would become isolated from the team given that I was working virtually - this was certainly not the case. I feel that to an extent, I could choose how busy I was - I was in constantly in communication with the team about what I was working on and what capacity I had to take on new work.

Although I was quite involved with the projects the team were working on, I wasn't given as much responsibility as I had hoped. This was completely understandable however, considering I was working from home (and hadn't even met any of the team), meaning there may have been some compliance issues, and also the internship was shortened from 10 weeks to 5 weeks meaning there was less to time to pick up the skills that would be necessary to take on more important work.

I found the week of training extremely useful in helping me develop not only the core technical skills for the job, but also general Excel skills that I have since used in my degree. Doing a virtual internship also provided me with valuable experience in working from home, specifically video call and email etiquette, something that is likely to be particularly useful in the future! I have already used lots of what I learned in my degree and beyond.

Although the atmosphere was more difficult to gauge given I was working from home, I found through the interactions I had over video that everyone was really friendly and also quite fun. This was clear in the team meetings and weekly quiz calls where everyone, including the MDs and directors, seemed completely comfortable to have a good laugh, but at the same time remain professional. It definitely felt like a team rather than a group of individuals.

The internship was extremely well organised given the circumstances. All of the interns were sent laptops with pretty much everything we needed already set up - the IT team were always available to resolve any minor issues. The first week of training went smoothly, and there was even time scheduled to meet and get to know the other interns which I appreciated. We were given online access to lots of useful resources and also had a specific training call for one program.

We had a packed first week of training, which was enough to cover the foundations of valuation and building financial reports/financial models on Excel. I have been able to apply a lot of what I learned in my engagements beyond the internship, for example the Excel skills have been very useful for my degree, while the financial concepts I learned have allowed me to understand and take a deeper interest in the news articles I read.

I received a return offer from the firm, and I am looking forward to re-joining next year! Future prospects look very promising - I noticed that a higher proportion of the senior-level staff had been at R&Co since they were at the analyst level compared to what I have observed at other firms, which is really encouraging to see - clearly there is lots of room to grow, and also plenty of incentive to stay rather than move elsewhere.

Nothing much aside from the group chats and occasional video call, however from what I heard from previous interns this would have been much better under normal circumstances

WFH

N/A as we were under COVID-19 restrictions