Summer Intern Review

There were many opportunities to interact with colleagues from across the entire bank, including a lot of socials which allowed all interns to get to know both one another and members of our team. The team is not hierarchical, as you might expect in other firms, so it is very easy to approach more senior members and feel integrated into the team. We were challenged every day, being assigned tasks that would develop skills with Office software and those specific to banking. The CSR challenge was great fun, we were given the chance to work with different teams across the bank, and in fact, encouraged to approach different teams to learn about the interplay of each division and the services offered by RBS.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. I developed trust with my colleagues, and thus they were willing to delegate work to me and trust me to deliver on this work. I was encouraged to see myself as a full-time analyst and expected to produce work to the same standard, thus I was valued for my contributions. I was encouraged to make suggestions and thus felt that my opinion mattered.

My managers were very supportive and gave great advice for my career and beyond. They were distant enough to allow us to assume responsibility, but approachable enough to provide the support that we needed to navigate our time at the bank.

I was given learning materials to read over, so I was balancing this reading material with day-to-day tasks where I was learning on the job. Always more to do. Sometimes I would stay very late and other times I could leave early. However most interns stay late to leave an impression of commitment, and because there is always more to do!

Given responsibility if asked for it.

I felt that there could have been a lot more training specific to our desk or division throughout the internship, primarily using the Bloomberg terminal and Office package. Concepts seminars would only be delivered on our demand for them and if we organised them. Otherwise I feel that there could have been more training, and perhaps online modules to allow us to make the most of the internship.

Varied depending on the desk you were working on. Some desks were very lively and involved more discussion with one another and more regular meetings. Others involved not being disturbed and getting on with the work you had and not needed as much interaction.

Could have had more direction about goals, targets and extent of knowledge gained on the internship.

Need more online modules and financial-specific material.

Uncertainty about future job prospects and security in the job