Securities Strategist Review

It was really great, I learned a great deal about the inner workings of a world class financial institution and met a lot of amazing people. The networking opportunities were also great and I'm sure I'll keep in touch with lots of the people I have met. The work was good fun and was at the right level to be challenging but not unapproachable.

My colleagues were amazing, I was assigned meaningful projects that had a large impact on the performance of the team, and was regularly informed about how they and the rest of my wider team felt my projects were coming along. It was easy to have quite a large impact very quickly.

My manager did a great job of supporting me and helping me build a wide network, and then leveraging that network to gain more support was easy because everyone was very approachable and willing to help with almost any problem. Even if they couldn't help they would usually point you to someone who could.

The working hours were relatively long, working around 8:45 to 7ish most days, and longer if something went wrong. There was definitely never a dull second though, and there were hundreds of opportunities to attend events and lectures from important people (both within the firm and outside). There was also definitely time for networking and personal development.

I was left in charge of my own projects a lot of the time unless I was asking for help, which definitely helped me feel like I had ownership of the projects, and like my thoughts about how to design and structure the solutions mattered and would be taken into account by the team.

I'm a physicist, and we don't have any finance related courses at all in my course at my university so the direct finance skills I have learned probably won't be very useful, but in terms of career development, organisational skills, networking ability, tenacity and drive all of the skills I have developed will be of great help for my future career.

It was super lively, I was on the actual trading floor so there's you can overhear lots of interesting things and you're always up to date about the political and financial things happening all over the world. You can feel the buzz when something important happens, and it makes the work feel really impactful.

The organisation was amazing, everything from being pretty open about the hiring process with lots of information available online, to the organisation of the interview days, and orientation at the start was amazing. There were also so many events organised for us, and you were kept consistently up to date with all of the goings on.

There was loads of training, the company pays for lots of resources that you can use for your personal development even outside the office (eg various MOOCs or other training sessions). People are also always super willing to give up their time to talk to you and give you advise whenever required!

Super great. The internship is kind of like a 10 week interview, so if you do well I think you have high chances of getting hired, and then once you're in the firm I think they really like to keep you. There's loads of internal mobility as well if you get bored of what you're doing its trivial to find another team doing something that would be more interesting.

Absolutely. There were hundreds of interns, so it's super easy to find a group of friends in the same situation as you who can help you out and socialise after work. HR also organised quite a few events throughout the summer with fellow interns so you get to know loads of people, sometimes even from the same uni as you.

London is quite expensive. Rent is obviously pretty high, especially if you want to be within walking distance of the office, but you can definitely afford it even on the intern salary, with plenty of money left over for socialising. Pubs also obviously charge London prices, but there are also so many things you can do for free (like museums, parks, art galleries etc) that it's no problem if you'd rather not spend

Yeah loads, the full timers often meet up to do things together, there are some events organised by the firms social networks (boat races, cycling, marathons etc), and there's a community team works day that everyone goes on where you spend a day supporting a charity in a way to give back to the community.