Cash Management Operations Analyst Review

My time at ASI has been brilliant. I have worked in a department that has fitted my skills really well, with large amounts of variation and no one day has been the same! Having a buddy as a port of call on top of my line manager, has created different points of contact for any issues. I have been in the loop with key business activities and have progressed from basic tasks, to issues that require a well rounded knowledge of the department.

My team have been very supportive from the get to and have always tried to support my learning. I was set goals/objectives to achieve within my first week of arriving at the company which prevented procrastination and focussed my learning so I could look back with hindsight to see clearly what I had achieved.

My line manager has been a brilliant mentor and surpassed my expectations. He drip fed me tasks to do within the team but also arranged for me to meet other members of teams which we work closely with. This gave me an appreciation of where our team fits in with the department and exposure to different business groups allowed me build up a network of contacts.

I started of busy, but as time went on, I was given less to do. I worked hard for my presentation in week 9 and after that was finished, the clock was just really winding down until the end of week 10. I was given a combination of project and BSU work, which was really insightful.

The expectations of me were set really well. I was drip fed tasks at the beginning but as I became more appreciative of the teams roles, the tasks I was given broadened. My responsibilities were tailored towards a first time starter, which was good to bridge the gap between university studies and the working world.

A lot of the problem solving skills and being able to read large pieces of text and to extract the important pieces of information was the most tangible skill. This was helpful at the beginning to speed up my learning. Some of the modules I did at uni had some relevance, but it didn't really help me too much on a day to day basis.

largely positive. there is a lot of re-structuring change going on at the minute with the merger, but everyone was more than willing to help me where possible. Everyone I met was very approachable and able to assist without me having to chase people up to much. The beauty of being an intern is that you have the flexibility to meet people and everyone was supportive, friendly and happy to help.

I had problems with start up issues at the beginning. I had 2 separate emails and due to the merger I couldn't get a lot of access to some of the notes I needed. Once these were cleared up, everyone went very smoothly and clearly there had been a lot of time and effort dispensed to make sure we had a beneficial placement.

We were given weekly workshops/sessions we could attend on top of our team responsibilities. This added some variability to our work and split up our days really well. The sessions allowed some transferable skills that I could apply to my day to day tasks, which meant I was more aware as to my areas of improvement.

The internship scheme rolls really nicely into grad job selection. There has been clarity of over the recruitment process from the get go, which has had an aspirational benefit since my performance related directly into future employment. The pool of applicants for the grad job comes directly from the interns, which has given me a great opportunity.

We all tried to get together on Friday nights for some socializing after work. There was great friendships made between people within our department and other interns in other functional areas. We all got on really and if someone was meeting someone new, they invited us all along to a 5/6 person session.

I live close by so I didn't have to do too much shopping/eating out, but Edinburgh can be quite expensive especially during the festival period. The company did Lunch and Learn sessions where they put on food with guest speakers, which helped cut the costs of eating out at lunch time.

Yeah it was great. Edinburgh has the fringe festival in all of August, which was a brilliant place to socialize with people and go for a drink after work. Other than that, George Street was always busy and our offices were located just beside a lot of good spots if we wanted to go after work!

It was mostly from a work point of view to attend sessions etc, but the intranet was filled with pinned posts about work sports teams and other activities. It was easy to get involved but I was busy with other sports commitments whilst here, so didn't have the time to sign up to any.