Enterprise Architecture Analyst Review

I found my internship with RBS to be a hugely beneficial experience. I was provided with support and guidance on my career options moving forward, and given the tools and support needed in order to understand what paths are available to me. I made lots of friends and really did enjoy my work internship with RBS.

RBS gave me the importunities I needed in order to full embrace my time within the bank. I was included in to important team meetings, and was even given various opportunities to travel with the bank. This experience made me feel really valued, as I felt like a true member of the team.

I was given full support and guidance by management and supervisors within RBS. I was given time away from my work in order to progress and understand my career options, both within and outside of RBS. My line manager was always available to provide me with support when it was needed, and was always willing to give up his own time in order to help me.

I was fairly busy on a day to day basis, however it was completely manageable. My manager ensured I was given enough work to stay engaged, whilst having enough spare time to focus on things such as career development and networking. This proved to be invaluable, as it really enabled me to embrace my time within RBS.

I was given a great deal of responsibility during my placement. My manager always made a point to allow me to 'own' my own tasks, in order to ensure I was fully responsible for them. This means that even once I finish my internship within RBS, my name is still known and visible to employees when they have visibility over the work I produced during my internship.

The skills I developed, and the training I received will greatly assist me in my degree studies and beyond. I have been taught invaluable skills about the finance industry and given full visibility over the workings of the bank. This will provide me with a good perspective of how a real business runs, which will go hand-in-hand with my degree.

The office has a great general atmosphere, with friendly and open approaches to communication. I have made lots of friends with full time and part time staff, as well as other interns. Because of this great working atmosphere in the office, I had a really positive internship within the bank, and have made contacts for life.

The internship was overall organised extremely poorly. The early careers team did a very poor job of keeping us informed and we had no visibility over the process. Some of the interns only found out their office location a matter of days before the internship started. This is disappointing as every other aspect of my internship has been amazing.

The firm has invested a lot of time and money in to my own personal training and self-development. The extent to which the company did this is apparent from the induction process, lasting an entire week (10% of our overall internship), whereby RBS hired in specialist companies in order to teach us things such as the ins and outs of the financial industry.

The future employment prospects within the bank are very positive, and provide a great route for progression. All of the interns are performance managed throughout the process, and we are then potentially offered a graduate role within the bank. This makes the internship much more valuable, as it could potentially provide me with a future career.

There was a great social scene amongst my fellow placement students, interns, and graduates. The company sets us up with a social networking user group, whereby we are all members prior to joining the bank, and it enabled us to network with each other prior to starting the internship. This also made it easy to arrange networking and mingling events throughout the internship.

The cost of living within Scotland is fairly good. The bank pays more than enough to manage rent and a fairly good lifestyle. Finding a place to rent over the summer in Edinburgh is difficult, since the Fringe festival goes on every year. This means hostels and short-term lets are difficult to find, and much more expensive than usual. RBS does not provide any assistance with this process, which was dissappointing.

The nightlife in Edinburgh is amazing. There is such a great range of clubs and pubs to visit, and during the internship the Fringe festival was ongoing, meaning we were able to visit pubs and clubs all over the city. This was a great experience and the timings of the internship really helped with it.

There are loads of opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. RBS provide interns with a Facebook group whereby we can all collaborate and agree on meeting up outside of work. This also helps with the full time staff, as they are always willing to go to the pub and socialise outside of the office.