Student Review

I really enjoyed it as it gave me an insight into the different areas of the Invesment Bank and it enabled me to connect with many professionals which at my age is a great opportunity for future careers

I felt highly valued as all the staff whom spoke to us repeatedly said that it was excellent that we were doing such opportunities so young and that we were in a really good place to be at this age, this made me feel valued.

I think as there were so many of us we didn't receive much one to one or small group attention from the professionals except from in the working lunches. In these working lunches I believe that I was given advice and guidance to what career path I may want to take which will help when I come to decide in the near future.

I definitely feel now that I know a lot more about investment banking and the different sectors of such a big business; however I think maybe some shadowing would have enabled us to develop a better understanding of where our skill set would fit within the different sectors.

It was extremely structured which I believe in this case was excellent as we used the little time we had to our advantage and tried to fit in as much as possible.

It was a lovely atmosphere and most the people were extremely approachable and friendly. It was good to be mixed with others we didn't know so we could develop friendships also.

As stated before, with such a large group it was hard for one on one time, the only time I would say I received personal development was in the mock interviews where I received personal feedback which I thought was extremely helpful and would extremely recommend them to keep this on the structure of the Insight 3 days.

For me, I would need shadowing to enable me to see where I would best fit in and what I may want to do in the investment bank as we were told a lot about the different sectors but didn't have much hands on experience therefore hard to fully understand.

I believe the company culture came across well especially when spoke to by certain experts, as they all said to our group that Nomura is about the people and I believe this came across extremely strongly.

The content was more to fill gaps in my knowledge and expand my skills rather than helping me to choose a career I believe. Activities such as CV skills and Presentations were geared more towards improving our basic skill set rather than helping us choose which direction to go in for a job. There were some games which were geared towards certain areas of the bank, such as the Trading Game and this gave us a taster of what it may be like to be on the trading floor however there was not enough time for there to be more than 2 of these.

Nomura could have offered expenses to be reimbursed to a maximum amount of money as I had about a 2hr30 travel each day and this cost a lot, also the other option would have been a hotel which I think would have been unfair to pay such an amount without any reimbursements. On the insight 3 days there were also other people who had stayed in hotels who had to pay an extreme amount just to be close to the area of Nomura so I believe travel expenses could have been reimbursed up to a certain amount. However we did receive food and drinks for free and this was extremely nice and enabled us to have more time doing other activities as we didn't have to go out of the firm to get lunch.

I believe this was one of the best parts about the experience as I think for many of us we wanted to know specifically what certain experts day to day jobs were and I had many questions I had planned out to ask, also throughout the 3 days many questions were raised in my head and each day we had a chance to communicate with the employees and they were extremely open to all questions including telling us negatives about working in their sector as for myself this is something I was also interested in knowing.

Most of the networking events were extremely successful for myself, I got people's business cards and got all my questions answered when speaking to an expert about their specific area. However i believe to better this opportunity Nomura should make sure they have a variety of different roles at the networking lunches, one time there were many IT experts and for myself this was not extremely helpful as I am not interested in IT and Communications.

I would 100% reccommend it, one, because it was extremely fun and I enjoyed getting to know so many new people and also, as said by many of the proffessionals, it is such a good opportunity to get your foot in the ladder of a sector you may be interested in. It looks extremely good to employers and at such a young age it enables you to be competitive in the marketplace.