Business Analyst Intern Review

I really enjoyed my internship with Capital One. The people working there are very supportive and there's a great culture within the company. There was plenty of training provided, as well as extra learning opportunities, and they give you real responsibilities from the start. They treat their interns really well, and I felt I left the internship having learnt a lot.

I felt extremely valued by my colleagues from day one. Not only those directly in my team, but everyone else around the company as well.

Every intern is given a buddy, mentor, and manager that supports them through the internship. It was great having a buddy in a different team that could provide general support regarding working life, whilst my mentor provided a lot of guidance regarding my project. The only negative thing I could say was that my manager was away a lot, and so I felt like my project lacked guidance from the top end.

The work-life balance at capital one is great. Not every day was busy, but it left time to meet people and learn more about the company as a whole, and what other teams are doing. I thought it was basically the right balance for an internship.

We were all given individual projects to work on over the 10 weeks. We had our manager and mentor to guide us with the direction of the project but it was mostly our own work and our own initiatives to solve problems. We were given a large amount of responsibility to complete the project.

We received a lot of training, both at the start of the internship and throughout. Having an individual project also helped develop my technical skills quite quickly as I learnt how to approach problems and identify the best solutions. I learnt a lot of professional skills that will greatly assist my career in the future.

There was always a great atmosphere in the Nottingham office. Everyone was really friendly to each other, and it was easy to approach someone at their desk for a chat or to ask a question. The cafeteria and the games room were also good places to meet people from around the business.

As a whole, the team that led the internship did a really good job organising the 10 weeks. We had lots of training and we were realyl well supported the whole time. I think as it's a relatively new program there were a few teething issues regarding communication between the managers of the teams we worked in, and those running the internship. However, they asked for lots of feedback and seemed to be really keen on improving it year-on-year which is great.

They definitely invest a lot into their interns, both financially and time-wise. We had lots of training sessions including on Excel, SQL, presentation skills, how to write a deck, etc. Our managers, mentors, buddies and other members of our teams were always available to help us set goals and achieve them. A lot of the skills they made sure to teach us were things we could take away and use in the future, and weren't just specific company-related things.

Capital One runs a really good grad scheme and there are plenty of opportunities for promotions within the company as well. For an intern, I think there are a lot of really solid future prospects within the organisation - they invest a lot into you and really want to help you succeed and ultimately get a job offer at the end.

Capital One takes quite a few interns each year so there was a really good social scene amongst us all. We often went for drinks after work and went on nights out on the weekends. There was also a good social scene between the interns that worked in Nottingham and those in London - travelling between Nottingham and London comes with a very generous dinner budget so both sets of interns often went out for dinner together.

Nottingham is a really affordable place to live. There are plenty of bars that do happy hours that run late into the night, as well as discounted food. Rent is also much cheaper than London - it's easy to find a decently nice place for a third the London price. It's definitely cheaper and more student-friendly than most places down south, which meant we were able to go out quite often.

There were a lot of cool bars around Nottingham but because the students weren't at university, it could get quiet. Also, it meant that club nights weren't as big as what you normally get at university.

There are so many opportunities outside of work at Capital One. It's slightly harder to get involved as an intern because we are only there for 10 weeks, but there was a summer festival whilst we were there, as well as a five peaks challenge, and opportunities to play sport with colleagues, or do community service and raise money for charity.