Summer Associate Review

I believe the internship program was valuable and surely will help me in the future. I have enjoyed my time here, not just for the work that I was involved in, but through engagement with people from wider organisation, shadowing a number of colleagues and engaging in social activities such as boat parties and dinghy sailing

Everyone in my team was very friendly. I always felt I am part of my team wherever I go, and my team members both delegated me work and guided me when I needed help. I was treated as equal, but at the same time was not uncomfortable to ask questions and learn.

At every point, I had at least 3-4 people whom I could always ask for help/guidance. I had a colleague from my team, my manager, graduate buddy, graduate in my team, HR and a colleague providing support for graduates, who were always happy to help me if I had any questions

In some occasions, I felt that I was able to do more, particularly in the middle of August, when a lot of people where on holidays, whilst in the other times I was very busy. I believe that this was the case due to the nature of the work that I have been involved and the time of the year I joined the team that resulted in sometimes uneven workload.

I was given a lot of responsibility. First couple of weeks allowed me to familiarise myself with business of my team, whilst afterwards I was responsible for producing some final deliverables that were used for external purposes

I think both on conscious and unconscious level, I have learned a lot of skill which I will use in the future, such as professional excellence, time management, workload planning, etc.

Atmosphere is very professional and relaxed at the same time. One is assigned some work that has to be completed, but as available to do it with hi/her own pace. Everyone is very supportive and friendly, and thus coming to work and even working sometimes under tight schedules does not involve a lot of stress.

The programme was organised well, and I had a 2.5 days of formal training before joining my team, as well as my team made some preparations prior to my arrival to smooth my on boarding as much as possible. However, sometimes due to the technical nature of work that my team is doing, as well as interlaps with holidays everyone takes in August, the workload was not very smoothly spread. Also, probably the best way to improve the experience both for myself and for the team that I have been involved in, it might be beneficial to have more details with respect to the role that I will be involved in. In certain cases some interns had a label of Operations, without much details. Even though the work was very interesting and I learned a lot, I feel I could have contributed more to the team if I had more specific information about my role prior to joining

I had a great support. My manager and team were always happy when I went to shadow someone and learn about roles within wider organisation. I had weekly meetings with a colleague form my team who regularly provided me with feedback and gave suggestions on what to concentrate more to gain as much as possible form this internship

This organisation has a good prospects for graduates and offers several rotations that could enable to get experience within and outside of the organisation (external secondment)

Yes, there were a number of socials and we even organised a karaoke nights as a goodbye party for a fellow intern who now became a friend

Some of the events were organised by the organisation and were subsidised, whilst in some occasions we had to cover the costs. In general, cost of living and socialising is reasonably affordable

In canary Wharf, there are a number of places to go, but in most cases when we were going out, interns preferred to go to the city centre (West End and Midtown)

There were number of opportunities. I did a presentation on a volunteering day in the organisation, attended a CSR day engaging with the community