Analyst Review

Overall, I enjoyed the internship and would recommend it. My role was slightly unusual as I had to assist Project/Programme managers. The day-to-day work was not thrilling, but it was interesting to see the challenges that senior management faces in a large organisation. Although less sociable, it was a good opportunity to work with more senior and experienced people on a daily basis and observe how they deal with the issues that were brought up to them and manage the people around them. We also had a two-week group project as part of the internship which I found very interesting as the project brief was quite broad, therefore I was able to choose a topic I enjoyed researching and talking about,

I got good feedback from my supervisor and even in larger meetings, it was sometimes mentioned that my work had been useful. As time went on, more people started giving me tasks and I got slightly more responsibility.

Although very busy, my direct supervisor had several one-to-one sessions with me to give me better understanding of their long-term goals and the approach they were taking to achieve them. This was very useful as this approach was general, and it is commonly used in many software development projects. I also had the opportunity to learn how work is planned and delivered in a much longer timescale (e.g. a year) than I was used to. I also had weekly meetings with my supervisor and his supervisor to discuss the progress I had made, get feedback and be assigned new tasks. This was very useful as I had frequent opportunities to discuss my work and get feedback so that I could make any changes needed to make it as useful as possible for the rest of the team. Finally, I had single individual meeting with several other senior members of the team. This was very interesting and useful as I had the chance to get an overview of the different aspects of the work carried out by the team I was working on (e.g. architecture, technical solution, functional overview, testing, etc.). It was also a great opportunity to be in contact with senior people in the organization,

At the start, I had a lot to learn about the work being done and the tools being used so I was fairly busy reading some material on that. I then had a period when I was less busy as I was given a few tasks that did not occupy all my time. Just before halfway through the internship, we started the intern group project, which took up some of my time. At the same time, I was given more tasked by my team, and the second half of the internship was much busier than the first one. Throughout, I had very reasonable working hours.

I was not assigned any crucial or time-sensitive work. However, the tasks I completed were useful to my supervisors as they help with future projects. I would say the work I did was not urgent, and therefore had not been tackled, but it was important to get it done, and therefore was appreciated by the team. Also, it was a fairly good amount of work to complete in the two months of the internship - I did not run out of work to do before the end of the internship, but I was able to complete a substantial amount, and therefore to see the benefits of it.

In my role assisting project managers, I developed presentation skills and some professional skills about working within a large team/organization. However, I did not learn nay technical skills.

Everyone was nice and kind. However, the focus was much more on work than any socialising. All interactions were purely professional rather than friendly.

The graduate recruitment team was extremely well organized, and all events/initiatives that they organized run smoothly and g=effectively. My supervisor was less used to dealing with an intern, therefore I was given little work to start with. However, he was very attentive to the fact that I enjoyed the programme, and he was proactive in asking me feedback and taking it on board to make the programme as useful as possible for me and the team.

We had a week of training at the start of the internship which was a good way to start to be eased into the programme and get to know the other interns. The actual training was useful, but not ground-breaking. We also had a half-day presentation skills training, which I found interesting and useful. Overall, I feel like the graduate recruitment team was keen to give us valuable training/learning opportunities despite the relatively short time available.

The work I did was interesting but not very exciting. I believe that in such a large organization, there are several interesting opportunities, and the organization encourages employees to move around to work on things they find interesting. Also, the graduate programme gives a great opportunity to take on a couple of different roles to explore different opportunities available.

There were many networking events. Since everyone in my team was more senior/older than me I found it harder to socialize, but they were all very nice. The initial training was a god opportunity to get to know other interns that you could keep in touch with throughout the internship

The internship was in London, therefore the cost of living and socialising was high. However, there were also lots of opportunities. Working hours were reasonable, so in that sense I was able to socialise.

Again, the internship was in London, so number of places to go and prices were both high.

I had two volunteering days in the 9 weeks of the internship. Post-work drinks were organized fairly regularly.