Business and Commercial Intern- Strategic Portfolio Management Review

The work was enjoyable and interesting. Initially the training week was good in terms of useful skills learnt that were not taught as part of my degree at University and the training I was given in the department was also very useful once I actually started to be able to get on with work independently. The work I was able to do within my department was interesting and challenging, though due to the nature of being an intern much of it was more of a contributing role as opposed to being able to undertake full projects on my own. The one thing I would emphasise is that this is not an internship where you make tea for the other staff and do admin, you do get a chance to have a go at the work your allotted department does and your line manager should push you forward in doing work and give you relevant work to do as mine did. Being able to contribute and feeling valued is what made this experience so valuable.

My new ‘colleagues’ were very welcoming and open with me and were nearly always happy to chat over ideas and thoughts on work or help me out if I was struggling with something (just ask when they are available and don’t make demands upon anyone’s time). As an intern you are set a project and my colleagues were happy to help me if I had any questions about their areas of speciality and I was also referred onto other acquaintances of theirs who they thought could assist me further. As well as this the people I was working with were always chatting happily about news and sport (Olympics while I was there) and they actively engaged me in these conversations too. I got the feeling that they were happy enough for me to be there and certainly they treated me as another member of staff during my time.

My line manager was absolutely brilliant, she was always pushing me to try new aspects of the business out and looking out for me making sure that I knew how to do work and helping me in all sorts of ways. She was anxious to make sure that the experience was valuable for me and that I should have every opportunity to progress further in the scheme if that was what I wanted to do. She genuinely seemed to care about how my internship was and I think that that was an aspect that really motivated me more than anything else to make sure I succeeded on this internship.

As an intern I think there is a fine line between sitting there twiddling your thumbs, bugging your line manager for more work to do or asking for more and being overloaded. My line manager was always asking me if extra work was ok, this was something I appreciated for two reasons; firstly, I had a long term project to do while in the internship and secondly this was also a very useful opportunity to learn as she would ask if I had time to do the work and if I knew how. At times when the answers were yes then no she always showed me how to do work. A valuable learning process. There were occasionally moments where I had little to do, at which point asking for work was always an option that was responded to quickly (there is always plenty going on) and I would like to think that asking for work is also valuable when it comes to end of internship review too.

I don’t think anyone can expect too much responsibility within an internship, especially as in a bank you is dealing with such important matters. However, I was afforded the responsibility to help deal with some important aspects that contributed to the departments work.

The skills learnt on this placement will be incredibly valuable for me going forward, both in terms of returning to Uni and in the future once I have graduated and got another job. Again my line manager was excellent in teaching me the relevant skills as were other colleagues in enhancing my understanding.

Very pleasant place to work, everyone very friendly and always happy to have a chat about work, or indeed other general events/news/sports.

The Intersnhip was well organised. An intial training week was then followed by 9 weeks in the departments which were an incredibly valuable experience. Further, the graduate and intern department within the bank kept in close contact with us to monitor what we were doing and check everything was running smoothly.

An excellent inital training followed by brilliant on the job training from my line manager who was constantly encouraging me to learn new things.

I am hopeful that I will be offered a further position in follow up to my current role as an intern.

Interns did discuss both the internship and social meet up opportuinities and when we did go to events together there were either organised social events by the group or we all just went to the nearest pub afterwards.

My placement location is not the cheapest city but this will vary according to where your placement is as the group has working opportunities all over the country (and indeed the world).

Excellent nightlife in the city when I chose to take advantage of it.

Not any that I chose to get involved in though there were extra activities around.