European Sales Analyst Review

Very much so. Whilst the hours were quite long and there was a lot to be doing I found the whole experience something challenging but with end goals that were ultimately achievable. I went in not knowing if I wanted to work in the industry let alone with UBS and found quickly that both equity sales and UBS were great fits for me.

Mostly everyone was fantastic. I got to know the people on my desks well and it was great that there were opportunities to chat to some of the staff in a non-business context too. During my internship I was lucky enough to have spent a lot of time researching an area which became a hot topic towards the end and got to share my knowledge with colleagues who were genuinely interested in my thoughts on the topic - many of whom I hadn't worked with to that point.

Not just the people on my desks but others who were in completely different areas were all willing to sit with me and tell me about what they did and set tasks for me so I could learn a lot more about the area. I spent a lot of time with colleagues not from my desk working on mini-projects to further my understand. In the case of my supervisors both were very happy to help and whilst they had different styles both made me feel like I could ask anything in order to learn.

It varied. A lot of the challenge is to make yourself busy and you begin to find tasks yourself. For instance making sure that when there's a spare hour asking round if you can help with anything or reading the FT can open up new tasks for you to help. Long term projects started to make the days very busy especially towards the end.

It's hard in sales and trading to do things which are role orientated given the need for FCA approval however a project I completed on my first desk was used to target new clients for the desk and the stock pitches and research I completed on my second desk probably gave some informed people the odd extra point to give to a client.

The skills will help not so much in my degree but I think that the skills in working-social contexts as well as how to do the actual job have been improved.