Santander: Finance Review

This internship was overall a fairly enjoyable experience, which I would liken to secondary school in terms of how fun it is. By this I mean that while the majority of the work is perfectly doable, much of it is a fairly repetitive slog, though one which I imagine is fairly inseparable from entry-level corporate work. That said, there were several tasks given that I found quite enjoyable once I got into the flow of them, and I was also in charge of a project to raise money for the BHF which I liked also.

My colleagues treated me respectfully at all times and would never appear to be talking down to me. They genuinely wanted to help out with any trouble I was having and were also highly inclusive at work socials (which happened surprisingly frequently; I attended at least 5 or 6 over the 10-week internship). These were, of course, subsidised by Santander as team morale is priceless.

One of the best aspects of my learning at Santander was the gentle slope of the dififculty curve- I was guided sufficiently through the outlines for tasks before attempting them, and more complex tasks were gradually introduced over the first few weeks, meaning I never felt lost or unable to ask for help. My only criticism was that often when you wanted to check or ask something, your manager would say something to the effect of "sure, give me 5 minutes" and take significantly longer- though later on in the internship, where I was introducing a new intern to some tasks, this came full circle as I found myself inadvertently doing the same.

My team was responsible for putting together the Half Year Financial Report for the first 6 weeks of my placement. This meant that the intensity of the work and the amont of overtime quickly ramped up over this period (it's not all bad- the team orders free Dominoes/Nandos/etc if you stay past 8pm or so). After the report was published however, the workload became far more casual, with a couple of long projects left to gradually contribute to over the remaining weeks. This more relaxed workload encouraged proactivity such as more time to focus on my CSR project (raising money for the BHF) and also arranging days to shadow other departments. The management was very relaxed about me spending my time doing these as they wanted me to get as much exposure and learning as possible.

As previously stated, my team was in charge of putting together the Half Year Financial Report during my internsihp. This is essentially a 200-page document that details all the risk analysis and the financial changes of the last 6 months, which Santander essentially then gives to investors to convince them of how well it's doing. This has zero room for errors, lest the bank gets sued for potentially millions. Most of my internship, after the first couple of weeks, was spent making changes to this report. I would characterise that as fairly responsible.

The main skills this internship emphasised were attention to detail, planning and organisational skills and also proactivity in networking and driving your own workload. The training was generally for specific tasks I performed towards forming the Half Year Financial Report, such as searching for specific formatting errors or editing certain sections of excel documents, which is the sort of general abilities that are expected of office workers. What's more important is the soft skills I developed while at the internship which can be spoken about at length in any job interview, with a wealth of examples I could pick from for any competency.

The internship surprised me with the extremely relaxed atmosphere present throughout open-plan office. Of course, everybody is there to work, but nothing stops people from going to speak to friends or colleagues for a bit as long as the work gets done. On one occasion I ended up spending most of a quiet Friday afternoon chatting about career paths with a couple of colleagues, which we could easily get away with due to the relatively on-topic conversation and the slack workload that afternoon. Oftentimes people on the Finance floor have been known to leave sweets at the end of their desks which are fair-game for anyone to share in.

Our line manager took in two interns in my year, repeating his last year's setup somewhat so he was experienced and prepared with regards to the internship programme. As previously mentioned, the difficulty curve is extremely smooth and I never felt lost or as if I couldn't ask for help. There was also a networking event early on which set up some team-building with all the interns which helped quickly get people organising group lunches. The only criticism was that there were a few dial-in seminars arranged for the interns which had consistent technical issues and essentially wasted people's time.

In the first couple of weeks there were several training sessions. These ranged from a somewhat hard-to-follow talk on their cross-checking excel system (bring espresso) to an enjoyable interactive activity in which you had to spot formatting discrepancies between two versions of the same document (a bit like a Finance-themed spot-the-difference). In addition to this the interns recieved a "new starter pack" which contained the basic info that we needed to get through the first few weeks, and some "mandatory office training" which, while tedious, is something you'd have to complete at any office, and was some great common ground for everyone to talk about at the networking event on day 3.

I finish the internship this Friday. I've been told I'll find out by then whether I'll secure a place on the Graduate scheme- the internship programme is used to streamline the application process so if I'm successful I won't need to go through an assessment centre again. The organisation's graduate scheme pays a little less than direct entry-level applicants but also gives more exposure to different departments in Finance, with annual rotations over 4 years as you complete the ACCA or CIMA professional qualifications. There's a tasty pay bump that comes with each exam pass, quickly catching up to the direct entry-level pay as you qualify.

As I mentioned before, there was a surpringly high frequency of (nicely subsidised) socials or team meals put on by my team in Finance leading to a high level of morale experienced throughout the internship. A couple of the interns in the networking event we had took the burden of taking everyone's numbers/emails and creating a whatsapp group to organise intern lunches or social events and suchlike, though admittedly many people didn't bother going to a club night on payday- each to their own...

I was, fortunately, placed in the London office in Triton Square for my internship. This was lucky since it was fairly near to my university house which I would have been paying for anyway, so in that respect living there was free. Kinda. You don't need a random intern on ratemyplacement to tell you that London is extremely expensive to live in, but hey, we got paid a little more than the national interns to make up for it.

You don't need me to write an essay to tell you London's nightlife is dank.

Outside my direct internship job in the Finance department, other interns and I were given a CSR (corporate social responsibility) project to put on a quiz to raise money for charity. This is introduced at the first-week intern networking event and teams are pre-chosen (by office location). Interns can put as much effort into this as they like (or their workloads allow) but I personally found it very rewarding, and the leadership role I took was excellent for furthering the soft skills that employers drool over. There weren't any other opportunities spoon-fed to us off the top of my head but hey, you're applying for internships, you know how to be proactive already!