Wealth and personal banking internship Review

HSBC did a great job of making the virtual internship as enjoyable as possible. There are obvious aspects that we all missed out on such as networking in the office and being able to socialise with the other interns but I think overall, most if not all of the interns commented on what a great experience it was. I got in so well with the other interns, and we had “social leads” who facilitated fun activities for us all which I think made a massive difference to the experience.

My team made me feel really welcomed and valued. On my last day they sent me some presents in the post which I really appreciated too. I think undertaking “extra” tasks such as working on a CSR project on ethnicity also helped to make the interns feel like we could have an impact on the company. The emerging talent team put on celebration events for us, which reiterated that our time was valuable for them.

They provided us with a lot of support in the form of gradcoaches, managers, OPMs, other interns, emerging talent team. I think having a range of people really helped because sometimes you don’t always want to go to your manager when you’re stuggling with something. As well as these designated people, my risk management team were so supportive and helped me with absolutely anything and everything. I couldn’t believe how helpful they all were, and constantly reminded me that I could always reach out to them.

I think I developed really good work communication skills, and especially in regards to virtual presentation. This will be particularly useful for the continuation of the work from home concept. My knowledge of the banking sector improved a lot. I’m not sure how relevant my skills are for university, but they will help with future jobs and job application processes.

It was so well organised despite it being the first time they’ve run a virtual internship. They structured in development activities such as a dedicated day, as well as weekly talks by inspirational people from across the company. I imagine if it had gone ahead as usual it would have been even better, as it normally spans over 8 weeks but we were confined to 5. I think the way it was structured helped the interns get to know one another really well.

Everyone was really positive during the experience. I got the impression it was a lot of work to reorganise the internship in a virtual format, but once it actually got underway and was going smoothly everyone seemed really positive and pleasantly surprised with how nt was going. We also did a fundraising event, and raised over £7000 in 5 weeks, and group achievements like this really help in making everyone feel at the best and really proud of what they’re doing. this was mirrored in the fun socials that were run throughout

They provided us with a lot of online development material. While we only had to do a small amount of mandatory online learning, they gave us access to great online platforms so we could tailor our development. We had a d elopement day aboht half way though, run by an external organiser. Whilst this was fun and a good way to break up the internship, I do think it could have been half a day rather than one whole day because I had quite a lot of other commitments/work tasks that week.

It is hard to tell what the office environment would be like, as well as factoring aspects like commuting on your performance. So while it did reflect the companies values and general feel, it won’t be entirely accurate. It would have been nice to visit the office at least once during the internship, but with restrictions it was too complicated to organise for all of the interns (especially with local lockdowns in certain areas of uk)

If was made clear how open the company are. In every instance we were encouraged to ask questions and always offer suggestions or improvements. This culture of being open really promoted team cohesion and helped bring about dynamic decisions. It may have been a little easier to understand this had we been in the office, but I think you still get a good idea of the values that everyone has via zoom calls / communicating online.

Because it is such a huge company and we just got placed in a certain team, it is hard to know whether it suits you. However I think it can give you an idea if you want to work for HSBC on the graduate programme, as during that you get to work in a number of different teams. Broadly speaking, it gave me an insight into why I would like to work in the corporate world (due to variety and ability to be internally mobile)

We were paid really well. Despite the internship being shortened due to covid-19, they paid us the same amount. This meant we got paid exceptionally well for the 5 week period. They didn’t have to reimburse us much since we were not travelling anywhere, but I know that they provided some equipment etc for those who didn’t have everything they needed in order to work from home. When I did apply for travel expenses for my assessment day, it did take a very very long time to get them. So I don’t know how smooth this process is, only that if you’re not an employee that it does seem very clunky.

Yeah they provided us with a lot of opportunities. We even got to have a webinar with the CEO Ian Stuart. I met a lot of people considering that it was conducted via zoom. We probably would have met more by working in the office, but they did put on talks and networking events frequently throughout the internship. They encouraged us to reach out too, so I worked with my manager to find any contacts that would be particularly useful for me to meet

As mentioned before, there were loads of social opportunities. They were mainly optional which worked well for me. Some of the interns held calls on a Friday and would chat/play games for hours. I had a lot of fun meeting the other interns, and sometimes grads would join us which always made things interesting!

Yes we did although it wasn’t as applicable as there were still covid restrictions. They had employee resource groups (ERG) such as mindfulness and religious groups but I didn’t get involved in them very much really. We did do fundraising events which was sort of outside of work. This would have been useful if we had been in office/in cities for the internship but we were doing it from home and therefore far away from most of our colleagues / fellow interns.

Absolutely yes. You can tell HSBC have run a lot of emerging talent programmes over the years. It was slick, fun and useful all at the same time. Even if you’re not sure you want to be in the industry there are so many different roles, like I was mainly doing project/event management in a risk team. You have nothing to lose by applying and you’ll most likely have a really fun, and if not that then definitely very useful experience