Operations Summer Intern Review

I very much enjoyed the ethos and environment during my placement at UBS; the people were friendly, the offices were nice places to work and the opportunity to actually work in the City of London was fantastic. The placement was also well administered. However, I felt that intern status somewhat limited effectiveness at UBS, largely due to compliance regulations.

I enjoyed great personal relationships with the colleagues in my office and actively enjoyed being in this environment from a social perspective (this was also true of the intern class). However, my usefulness to colleagues other than those on my team (most of which was offshore) was limited by systems access, which took a long time to obtain even after approval was granted, which itself was dependent on verifiable business need. Therefore it was difficult to find any work besides basic admin outside my own team.

My Line Manager provided a great deal of support and guidance, which was particular notable as he was extremely busy for the duration of my placement. My supervisor was great to work with and very supportive, but less pro-active in terms of guidance, almost never finding me more work even when asked (though in his defence he had handed in his notice). Thus, my major criticism here would be a lack of alternative guidance in terms of finding work, but again this returns to the root problem of compliance regulations mentioned above.

My work load varied a great deal throughout the internship, following a bell curve. The beginning of the internship I had little work, again because of waiting times for systems access. Once project work was allocated, I became busy, but once projects and final presentations were completed (two weeks before the end of the internship, work tailed off. In some respects this reflects normal procedure to ensure work is completed, but on such a short placement, it didn't seem very efficient.

Not much. Responsibility for my own projects was total, but it was difficult to be given real responsibility for anything else because of intern status (anything considered to have risk was off limits).

The training was incredibly useful as I had no prior experience of banking, finance or economics, experience of which I believe is useful life knowledge. Excel skills learned through training and experience are also very transferable.

The atmosphere was great, very friendly and entertaining. People were always willing to help and teach and provide work if they could. As a very busy function, the team was more sociable in the office with colleagues regularly bringing in food and a quite fun and jokey atmosphere to keep things light. There was limited team socialising outside the office because the team was slightly older, but this was supplemented by social activities with intern colleagues.

The internship was very well organised and administrated from initial contact right through to exit interviews. The only criticism was a lack of information on our specific function prior to start; we only knew where we'd be working when we were delivered to our desks.

Training was first rate, providing me with a good basic understanding of investment banking in general as well as a consolidation of IT skill with an Excel training course - very transferable. We were educated on Operations as a wider division reasonably well with weekly sessions. The only thing was lacking was role specific training, though this was replaced with learning by experience.

Still waiting on a hiring decision, but those on the graduate scheme have indicated that chances of a place are reasonable for Operations interns.

Excellent. Our division was perhaps the most sociable as we had very reasonable working hour, but it's entirely dependent on the group.

City of London is expensive, but the salary is sufficient to live in reasonable accommodation, afford the commute and enjoy the placemen, with enough left over to save at the end.

Many bars and pubs in the area, Shoreditch not far away. It's London so you can't go far wrong.

Entirely dependent on individuals to find them, but there are a range of company societies and clubs to join. Interns also must take one day to participate in some form of Corporate Social Responsibility project - for Ops interns this was the Shoreditch games, a sports day for children from local schools in Shoreditch. Fantastic fun, a highlight of the placement.