Data and Analytics Intern Review

The role consists of a placement with a Data and Analytics team in the NatWest group. I have taken part in some work which has been set by my placement manager, who is a member of the team I have been placed in. This work was similar to the work that is done by the permanent team members, including coding in SQL and some general data analysis tasks. The internship also includes a group project with interns from across different business areas coming up with a solution to a problem presented by the business.

I have learned to code in SQL and use Snowflake, and gotten familiar with Tableau dashboards. As part of the self-led learning time during the internship I have also refreshed my data science with Python skills using DataCamp, which has lots of courses and is available to use during the internship. There have been several opportunities to practice making presentations and presenting them, which has been another good chance to improve an existing skill I had from uni.

There wasn't a huge amount of responsibility as the work I was doing wasn't business critical and probably didn't really need to be done, it was more a chance to see what the work done in the team is like. With that said, I did however feel that I was given complete responsibility over my own tasks and was allowed to work on them in my own way without having someone over my shoulder telling me how I should be doing them.

There is a lot of support available. You are assigned a placement manager, and mine was really helpful and always available if I needed anything. In addition to this you are also assigned a buddy, who is a recent graduate working at NatWest. That was really helpful for getting information from an early careers perspective. If there was ever anything that your manager or buddy couldn't help with, the early careers team were always easy to reach and held drop in sessions if you had any questions.

The company culture is very relaxed, I don't feel like I saw anyone being overly stressed during my time here. People are really friendly and approachable, and I always felt like I could reach out to just about anyone and get a response. NatWest Group clearly values work life balance and encourages staff to log off and not to work too many hours, which is a welcome change from other financial institutions with reputations for asking a lot more of interns and graduates.

I enjoyed my internship a lot, and I enjoyed the amount of exposure I got to different business areas, which will really help as I try to decide what I want to do for a career. The weekly spotlight sessions featuring speakers from different areas of the NatWest Group were a really valuable opportunity to hear about areas of the business I probably would never have been exposed to if I was simply siloed in my own team.

Yes

When applying for NatWest Group the advice is probably the same as when applying for any other internship or grad scheme, you should do your research and make sure you understand the company, but also that you understand why you want to apply for the specific role you are going for. If you want a company to invest the resources required for a grad scheme/internship in you then you have to show that you are going to be motivated to stick with the role and that it is really what you want to do.