Business Analyst Review

There were a lot of flexibility with the internship and it is definitely as good as you make it. By taking advantage of the opportunities, the internship can turn out to be very fun and rewarding. However, there are also a lot of issues with it, such as slow and poor on-boarding process, HR not taking our opinions into account, being placed in slow-paced areas that we did not want to be in, and little flexibility to choose where you will end up for your graduate. As an internship it is nice though, with some interesting events and people are helpful.

There are a lot of helpful and friendly people at the company, thus the culture is quite good and welcoming. There were also appropriately challenging tasks given, although not every intern would agree with this. However, the interns did overall not feel valued as there is little flexibility to choose teams and departments beyond the internship.

I had a wonderful manager, but this is very dependent on who you end up with. I was fortunate in this sense where I was provided a lot of help and advice with my tasks and felt that it was a person I could easily turn to if I felt stuck.

It was a good balance of projects, events and people to be meeting up with. This is different depending on who you would ask as some people felt as if they had nothing to do on a daily basis. But once again, this depends on how proactive you are in being involved.

I had a lot of responsibility in the projects I was involved with and with my own schedule. It was nice that the flexibility existed in regards to when to show up to work and having the ability to leave earlier. This also depends on who your manager is as I have heard differently from others.

It is once again dependent on what you make out of the internship. The events organized by HR were a bit waste of time, but my line manager gave me the opportunity to take courses through plural sight which helped develop skills that could potentially be applicable to my degree.

People would come in and leave without speaking with any of their neighbors. There were some people on the team who would engage in conversations and have them be more personal and non-work related. But the general theme, at least in the area where I worked, was quite dull to be in.

The on-boarding process was horrible, it took everyone about 1.5 weeks to get fully set up with email accounts and access to computers. The speakers at the events were the exact same as the ones during the insight week a year before, talking about the same things. And it felt as if the HR didn't care too much, in general, about the interns. The reviews with HR lasted 10 minutes, feedback wasn't taken into account, and there was little support for the concerns raised, as well as barely any money spent on induction or final event.

There was a financial training event, but most interns felt as if they did not get enough out of it. There was no other formal training as the speaker series consisted of directs speaking about their lives mostly. However, depending on your manager, you could get training in your area through pluralsight or helpful colleagues.

There is a lot of opportunity to climb the ladder at this organization by being proactive. However, it is in general not an exciting place to work. Unless you love making money, I would suggest finding a more thrilling and fast-paced place to work. It isn't until you have worked within the financial industry for some years that it changes.

The fellow placement students had a lot of fun together, which was mostly attributed to having spent a spring week together and knowing each other a bit before. We organized a lot of social events together including wake boarding, bowling, lunches, going out to the bars, laser tag and more.

Canary wharf is a very expensive area to socialize in, however, you are able to find some cheap deals not too far away for different kinds of socializing. This includes activities as well as drinks after work where some of the bars in the area were more reasonable with their prices.

The night life was very fun in the area I worked in. Canary wharf has a lot of fun bars around the area and Thursdays are a big day for the finance companies to go out after work. During the summer, there is also a lot of happenings and events.

There are opportunities to get involved with some sport teams and some networks such as a women network. It is about being proactive and you can start an initiative if you want as well. However, it is not widely advertised and a bit difficult to find out about unless you know someone.