Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my internship. I found that there was good variety in my day-to-day work while my team also got me involved in interesting and often external meetings. The Bank is an incredibly interesting place and there are always events and seminars with guest speakers, so if there's something that sounds interesting you can absolutely do that.

I definitely felt valued. I had the opportunity to present my work to a relatively senior level and felt my manager found my work useful. It definitely felt like I wasn't just being given jobs for the sake of it but because they added value, while I was often asked to speak up at meetings and provide updates too.

My manager did a good job of providing support and guidance. There were formal checkpoints in terms of a mid-internship review and a final review but most support was ad hoc. Often during meetings I would write down things I didn't know about and my manager would happily sit with me for 15 minutes where I could rattle away questions.

I definitely felt like I had a very good quantity of work. I had two projects but also a myriad of ad hoc tasks that popped up which always kept me busy. I regularly had touch points where I could voice if I felt I either had too much or too little work.

I was given quite a lot of autonomy and responsibility. My team were happy to bring to external meetings which was very flattering and helped me feel they can confidence in me. Meanwhile, in my projects I had licence to reach out to people and look through documents. I really felt like I was the owner of my work.

Being able to attend external meetings really helped develop my soft skills as I was able to see how these meetings were carried out and how people communicated. I developed my ability to work with others and collaborate too. I think a huge learning point was around the industry I was covering, where I feel like I developed tangible technical knowledge around industry trends.

Really good. I was surprised to see how young the atmosphere was, which is the result of having such a large graduate intake. The result of this is a very friendly atmosphere with lots of people speaking frequently. My team would frequently joke around while also getting the work done which made for an enjoyable but rewarding environment.

There was a formal induction with a set mid and final internship review meeting. Other than the one day IT induction there was not much contact with HR but they would always be available with weekly optional drop-in meetings. I thought there was generally clear communication and I always knew what the process was/what was going on.

There was good investment. I was able to attend about 4/5 Bank seminars which would be run by experts, while HR set up some insight seminars with different business lines. You get a laptop for the duration of the internship and there is a vast amount of resources available in order to learn. There is an e-learning resource which is actually much better than I've seen at other organisations.

Future employment is very appealing. The Bank invests in its staff and the young environment makes it seem like a sustainable place to work. The Bank offer and support a variety of qualifications and accreditations which help your development while the environment is very supportive with a big focus on career skill development.

There was one HR organised social in the first week which was really great for getting to know the other interns. You typically saw a few 'cliques' forming among groups due to the large class size but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. This resulted in a good amount of socials but nothing too crazy. One thing you see is many interns live with family far-ish away which can make it that not everyone can commit to socials/events.

It's London, so expensive living is to be expected. The Bank does have policies that help you out in terms of a subsidised canteen that is incredibly cheap. There are enough chain restaurants/supermarkets near that mean there is usually the option to be cheaper in your spending too. That being said, it can be easy to spend a lot of money if you're not careful.

The City of London has a very high amount of bars/pubs in walking distance, with a great deal of variety. Shoreditch is relatively walkable which is another really lively area and both offices are on top of Bank station which is really well connected with the rest of the city. This makes for a very vibrant night scene, if perhaps a bit intimidating for some.

Being London means that just about any activity you can think of will be supported in some way. There are plenty of gyms, clubs and societies with a massive amount of events going on all the time. The main issue may be with cost and the fact that London is so big means some things aren't quite as close as you might first think though.