Project Analyst Review

There were lots of opportunities to meet other interns and collaborate with people from different areas of the bank. This meant that I had a lot of exposure to what the bank does, how different areas of the bank work and also allowed me to interact with some of the more senior staff within the bank.

I felt very valued as there was a lot of people there for me to reach out to if I had any issues with the work I was doing. It was made very clear at every stage of my internship that it is a learning process and it's OK to make mistakes.

Each week I was to complete a learning log of things I had done, learned and areas I wanted to improve. From this my manager would seek to help me expand on the areas I wanted to learn more about or give recommendations about how to shore up some of the weaknesses that had been identified.

There were times throughout that I had to actively seek out things to do, but this also meant that I was able to go to other areas of the bank more freely and get a more holistic view than other people that had more work. It also meant I got to take advantage of the free learning opportunities provided by the bank.

Within my role the project I was supposed to be helping didn't have a lot of movement. This was the main area for me to have a lot of responsibility within my role as the others were more based around general improvements within the team which may or may not be implemented.

I will definitely take forward a lot of the skills that I have learned here to improve my school work and professional development. In particular, I think that I have been given the necessary tools and advice to really level up my presenting skills, and my ability to work off my own initiative in an effective manor.

When the team was in it was good, however many people worked from home throughout the week.

The internship did have a loose structure where I would have an 8 week project to do alongside the work that I would have as part of the team I was assigned to. However, this kind of broke down when the project didn't actually run as it was expected to and meant that I had a lot of spare time. Because of this I had to work off my own initiative to find things to do and hence wasn't part of the actual organisation of the internship itself. While the structure might work well for teams that have lots of consistent work it might be a bit too loose for some areas of the bank.

The bank had a lot of opportunities for personal development which I took advantage of. Some of them, in particular the Entrepreneurial Development Academy were really helpful with my own personal development. There is also a lot of emphasis placed on personal development by senior leaders as being a part of your role and not an extra-curricular to your job which I thought gave a great insight into how highly valued it is.

I think that working with the bank in the future would definitely be very exciting. The current transformation that is happening is very promising and there are a lot of very different roles that would suit any number of areas that I might want to work in. There is also a lot of room to grow both personally and professionally by moving up from within.

Yes, lots of group chats were set up in order for interns and graduates to take part in social activities together through the week and at weekends.

I didn't live in the area I was working.

N/A

The interns and graduates both had 5-a-side football games being set up for after work throughout the week. There was also lots of opportunities to get involved with corporate social responsibility projects such as hiking Ben Nevis or helping to write a cook book. There were also many different social events organised by the bank for interns to get involved with.