Associate Review

Overall I enjoyed my internship with the FCA. I was given a good deal of responsibility, exposure and insight from the very beginning and supported throughout. The particular team I ended up in did not suit my skill set or interests as much as it could have but ultimately this did not matter too much as I still learnt a lot and was able to undertake valuable work. The culture at the FCA is very positive and a really lovely atmosphere for an intern to work in as their first experience of work.

From the very beginning my team treated me as an equal and trusted my judgement. After only a couple of weeks it has got to the point where I was being asked to train newer members of the team on some of the things that I had done. This demonstrates their willingness to let you get on with your work and for that work to have value and be considered equal to the work everyone else was doing.

The HR team at the FCA looking after the interns were very supportive, however within my team my 'regular' one-to-ones with my line manager were far from regular or that comprehensive. After a week or two I was transferred to another colleague (not a manager) to have one-to-ones with, and whilst these were excellent in their content and direction, the person was not ultimately responsible for my internship work and would not be the person reviewing my performance at the end. This however was unique to me when compared to fellow interns, so I feel that things could have been sorted out in a better way to ensure consistency across the intern experience.

There was no point in the ten weeks where I had nothing to do, and nor was there ever too much for me to feel able to handle it. Each day I worked a standard 9-5 and if I had too much to complete by a given deadline it was very easy to pass some work off to other members of the team. There was not an expectation that I would do long hours to get the work done, but nor was it ever the case that I had to search for things to do.

From the very beginning of the placement I was given a high level of responsibility as part of the team that I was working in. I was immediately treated as an equal with equal opportunity for responsibility and so was able to undertake meaningful work from the very beginning. This responsibility did not however come with too great an assumption of my ability and so I felt that it was at the correct level.

Over the course of the ten weeks there were a variety of skills that I developed which should help me in my studies and beyond. Determining ideal processes to get a task done, improving my ability to present to an audience and liasing with busy internal and external stakeholders to get a task complete were all skills that I had to use on a daily basis and so improved on these vastly. However, this skill set is rather limited in its variety compared to a greater range of skills that some of the other interns will ahve utilised over their time here.

The general atmosphere was one that was relaxed, but where people still cared about the work they were doing. In my particular area people would not work ridiculous hours and would chat across the office at some times, but they were also passionate and hardworking most of the time. This was a good balance between fun and serious.

The internship was set up in a very clear style that made it very easy to join the organisation. The internship had a clear structure where everyone had a good overarching understanding of how long they were there for, what they had to achieve in that time, what opportunities they would have in that period and what the process would be going forward in terms of graduate selection.

Each week we had scheduled opportunities to hear about other areas of the FCA. This meant that by the time that we left we had a good understanding of the whole range of jobs that you could do, and not just the ones that you undertook over the placement. My manager was happy for me to book onto training coruses and recommended things that would suit my particular interests at several points over the internship.

The graduate scheme which the internship leads into is very appealing. Over a two and a half year programme, you get to undertake two 6 month placements in different areas to the one you work (the first is an internal secondment where you go elsewhere in the organisation, the second is an external secondment where you can work elsewhere in industry) and are then fast-tracked to a senior associate position.

The intern group was a small group but socially we were quite close perhaps in lieu of this. We would eat together each day and had the occasional group things outside of the FCA. The amount of time that we actually spent together outside the FCA seemed to be less than we hoped, and certainly wasn't reflective of our friendship as a group.

Canary wharf is not cheap.

Canary wharf has poor nightlife.

Lots of opportunities were available to us, but it felt that the majority of these were clearly for full time memebrs of staff and I would have felt slightly out of place as an intern joining some of the many clubs on offer. That said, I'm sure that if I worked here full time I would have been much more involved and so there is certainly the opportunity for this.