Product Intern Review

I very much enjoyed my ten week internship at Lloyds Bank Cardnet. It was great to raise my commercial awareness through learning about how Lloyds Bank Cardnet runs as a business. It was also a good opportunity to fill my skills gap in the particular area of Excel and data analysis.

I felt valued by my colleagues to a great extent. My colleagues would regularly ask me to go for a coffee to catch up and see how I'm doing and if I had any worries or qualms. Whenever I had produced a piece of work, appreciation was shown for my efforts and feedback given accordingly.

I was very much given support and guidance by management and our supervisors. At no point did I ever feel like I couldn't go to one of my colleagues to ask a question about how to perform a particular function on Excel or for help on developing a piece of collateral.

It really varied, perhaps illustrating the intermittent nature of the business area that I was placed in. Some days I would have tons of data analyses to carry out as well as collateral to develop. On other days, there wouldn't be much to do so I would have to take it upon myself to carry out some research and find odd jobs to do.

Given that the internship was only ten weeks and the nature of my business area, it felt like I wasn't given that much responsibility in the end. Rather than doing work that my colleagues would have done in my absence, I carried out work that they wouldn't have had time to do but that still added value to Cardnet and the running of the business.

As a Philosophy, Politics and Economics student, the development of my Excel skills will prove invaluable to applying my economics studies to real world data. Further developing my communication by delivering a presentation to the Cardnet leadership team will help me going forward with any public speaking my career may require.

After the first four weeks, the internship was well organised. However, it took about a week to get a hold of a laptop to work on and there lacked a clear structure of work for me to do across the ten weeks. That being said, once my line manager and I were able to ascertain what we were going to aim for me to achieve, the internship fell into place.

Future employment prospects within the organisation are very good. As a Lloyds Banking Group Scholar, I have the option to come back next summer for another internship. This provides a clear route to the graduate scheme, should I impress on this second internship and gain a referral from my line manager.

There was a good social scene amongst fellow placement students and colleagues. Often, the interns would get together and go for dinner or to the pub to just catch up and see how everyone's doing on the weekends. The kitchens we had provided a good social space to get to know new people too.

Interning in the middle of London meant that there were many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work. I joined a dodgeball league upon invite from a colleague in Islington and have enjoyed meeting new people there. Also, a bunch of the interns would often go to Finsbury Park to play some basketball.