UBS Spring Insight and Tomorrow's Talent Review

The programme was a virtual insight week spanning 4 days. Typical day began at 9am and finished at 5pm, during which we had a lunch break at 12 and smaller breaks between sessions. The day consisted of multiple speaker sessions in which current UBS employees ranging from managing directors to industrial placement interns would detail their job role and experience at UBS. At the end of each session we were able to ask many questions to develop our understanding of UBS. Most sessions were interactive in that we had live quizzes and some back-and-forth between speaker and spring interns. Most speakers were highly engaging and helpful.

By the end of every session during the programme I had learnt something new about some sector within UBS or about UBS as a whole. We were given lots of insight into both the technical and inter-personal aspects of the various roles at UBS and the skills necessary to succeed within each one. Due to the virtual nature, there was little work or responsibility for spring interns as we spent most of the time just listening to the speakers, therefore we were not able to develop or gain any concrete skills. This programme is more informative than developmental.

The programme allows you to gain a glimpse into the realities of working in a bank such as UBS and you are able to see the sheer variety of roles available within the business. This kind of insight would have been very difficult to attain outside of directly working in a bank. The business as a whole was broken down to us coherently and we were able to gain understanding on how the many different business lines within UBS (e.g IB, Wealth Management, Technology, Quant etc.) all interacted with one another to enable the firm to offer the services they provide.

UBS often promotes their strong culture as a major selling point and they continued to do so during this insight programme. From interacting with many of their employees, this supportive culture does seem to be quite genuine and was cited many times as a key reason for why individuals chose to work UBS and remain there - some for over a decade. This culture was communicated to us too. All the speakers were happy to provide as much information as possible and help us with all queries, even sometimes staying past the scheduled time in order to get through all questions.

The insight was overall enjoyable due to the strong charisma of a few of the speakers and the in-depth information many of them were able to provide. However, not all speakers were equally interesting or engaging, and the virtual format does make it hard to enjoy as you are sat in front of a screen for hours on end, with little physical interaction. There was an effort made by the talent team to offset this, through providing networking sessions with fellow students and activities such as a mindfulness/yoga session to end one of the days. However the format itself really does make the experience difficult to call enjoyable.

Yes

UBS is very big on their culture. Especially for insight events like this, they mention that they are mainly looking for people who can showcase their willingness to learn and an interesting personality. So in the interviews it would be best to communicate this to them by being engaging and highlighting your interest in banking and UBS. There does not seem to be much emphasis on you knowing any technical skills and there is no expectation for you to be certain of your preferred role for this programme.