Technology: Industrial Placement Intern Review

I was disappointed at first to find out I wouldn't be working in a particularly technical team, even though I was working within the Infrastructure division rather than a Development team. My teams main function was critical incident management, which involved a lot of co-ordination across the other Infrastructure teams in order to resolve incidents quickly. I particularly enjoyed this aspect of my placement, I hadn't experienced this before and it was great to see teamwork on such a large scale. I was working mainly with the tools team who support and maintain the communication and reporting tools, I really liked the fact that I had exposure to a mixture of application development/support as well as some project management work.

Definitely felt like one of the team, whenever I spoke to other people, whether they were in my team or outside my team they were always very approachable and happy to help. Something very encouraging to see in a large firm such as Morgan Stanley, they have a very strong people-orientated culture which makes it a pleasure to come into work every day.

Management and other colleagues were always there and willing to help, you wouldn't be expected to go to them for everything, however when you had exhausted your own resources and needed some information they would be able to either help you themselves or point you in the direction of someone that could help.

I was working in a global team, so we worked on a shift basis, with early and late shifts respectively. If you were on shift, you would be responsible for reports that needed to be sent as well as answering the hotline for escalations. If you weren't busy dealing with escalations you could spend the time on project work. There was a good balance between project work and incident management, at times I felt quite busy however this is due to the nature of the work the team carries out.

I felt towards the earlier stages of my placement, understandably, I wasn't given much responsibility. However as time went on, I was increasingly treated as another member of the team and therefore given the appropriate responsibilities. One aspect my team was involved in was the managing of branch office power down events, as a placement student, I was given the responsibility to lead all the planning and execution of this event - not something you'd necessarily expect to be allowed to get involved in as an intern!

Due to the fact I was in an operationally focussed team as opposed to being in a technical projects based team, I don't think I picked up as much technical knowledge as I might have expected. However, there were a vast amount of "professional skills" that I picked up along the way. I had the opportunity to speak to other technical teams in order to increase my technical knowledge and by being involved in the tools team, I picked up two new languages (Perl and .NET/C#) which I think will be very useful in the future. Overall, the experience of working in such a large organisation is invaluable and I can see it being beneficial in the future.

Office floor was based on an old trading floor style layout, with teams across the floor. Most people are busy working on their own day to day work, but you could always have a good laugh or chat with people from the team I was in.

The program is quite well setup, you get a good overview of the business when you start off. After that, it depends on the individual teams as to how they run the placement. HR are always there to offer support and have several sessions arranged across the year to help you gain an understanding and some basic knowledge.

There was plenty of training provided within the first couple of weeks for all those on a placement, some specific training was provided throughout the year depending on which team you were working with. However, there are a plethora of training courses available to you, both internal and external to the firm. A lot of my training was on the job as opposed to formal classroom style of teaching.

Definitely something that will require serious consideration, I have applied for a position on the full-time graduate scheme, however will need to wait till I finish my placement in order to find out whether I'm offered the place on the scheme. Even if I didn't come back for the graduate scheme at Morgan Stanley, it would definitely be a place I would look to work in the future.

Earlier in the placement, whilst summer placement students were still here, there were much more socialization between fellow placement students. Throughout the year, I felt this declined however everyone seemed willing to socialize with each other every once in a while.

London is expensive for rent, however other bills and supermarket shopping is comparable to elsewhere in the UK. The price of food varies, if you want to spend lots of money, there are places for that however there are equally plenty of affordable places to eat.

Canary Wharf is quite a lively place, filled with plenty of other hard working individuals at other investment banks and large firms. They also like to enjoy themselves and unwind after work, however across London there are plenty of places to go out and enjoy yourself.

There were regular team outings, as well as monthly activities organised by a team across the technology division. There are also plenty of communities within the firm to get involved with.