UBS Emerging Talent Intern Review

I had a great time on the UBS Emerging Talent Program. Visiting Switzerland for a week to learn about UBS gave me the chance to meet people from around the world, which is a rare opportunity and one that I will never forget. The four weeks in the London offices were also very enjoyable. It was great to be working on a project with a teammate that may actually add value for the team we were working for.

Once the project had been completed, I genuinely felt like I had added value - the team were so appreciative and said it was something they had been meaning to work on for quite a while and that they would use it to help determine their strategy.

My line manager gave me a huge amount of support. He was clearly very busy a lot of the time but whenever he had a spare 30 minutes he was happy to sit down and talk through the work he does, educate me and my teammate about financial services and help us through any problems we were having with our project.

For the most part, I was busy all the time from 7:30am-5:30pm. There were a few times when we would hit a problem with the project and we would have to wait for our line manager to come and help us.

We were entirely responsible for our own projects. We planned the timing of the project and developed our own macros and functions to fit the brief.

The skills I developed will definitely help me in my degree and in the future. I learnt a lot about Excel and VBA, as well as the financial industry. The programming and independent thinking/learning skills that I developed further are invaluable.

The atmosphere at UBS was great and, honestly, much nicer than I expected from an investment bank. Everyone was so friendly and willing to find time in their day to talk to you and to help you in any way if you asked or needed it. Everyone seemed to love their jobs and get along with everyone else too.

Very well organised. Different teams in the company had made time to come up with a project for us to complete and had a good idea of what we should be doing and when. We had a line manager to help us with our projects and a mentor for moral support. There were also organised social events to meet other people on the program, as well as UBS employees. The week in Switzerland was also incredibly well organised. We were very well looked after.

I felt the company put a lot of time into personal training and development, especially my line manager. He always found the time to help us through problems and also had regular talks with me to see how I was getting on and whether I was enjoying it and learning something. I got great feedback from him at the end about things I did well and things I could improve on. Our mentors also helped with our personal development.

I had a great time at UBS this summer and I'm going back to do a full 9 week internship with them next summer. It will be interesting to see what it's like having a proper role within the company as opposed to working on a project made to last 4 weeks. Future employment prospects are appealing.

Yes - we all attended the social events organised by the company but also organised our own events as a group.

UBS provided us with accommodation, which was amazing and within walking distance of the office. Besides that, the living costs were quite high. Food and drink were particularly expensive. I know that if I had had to rent somewhere then that also would have been very expensive.

The nightlife was great. Shoreditch was nearby and several bars and good clubs in other areas not too far away.

The company put on some activities for us during the internship but there was also a lot to do otherwise, especially in terms of socialising and sight seeing.