Equity Research Associate Intern Review

If you enjoy understanding the intricacies of business, enjoy stretching your mind a little bit everyday and want an extremely flexible working environment; Fidelity is your dream job.

Your first point of contact is HR and they are excellent. Other friends have interned at AMs/Banks and are treated as a number rather than a name. I had one contact in HR from the assessment centre to completion of the internship. Other colleagues were very polite and courteous, and very happy to help with any difficulties you had in understanding company accounts etc.

Fidelity assign a manager to the equity research interns. Having unlimited access to an investment professional with literally decades of experience was invaluable. Interns were treated in a similar fashion to full-time employees with real tasks and real feedback provided on those tasks. Although chats with the Director of Research were vital in developing the underlying mindset advancement of that mindset came through discussion with other analysts. This is an art not a science, and discussion with colleagues will help to further your understanding of analysis and valuation techniques.

You really chose your own schedule - I never felt overloaded. Some days I would arrive at 9-9:15am and others at 7am. I would normally leave around 5pm with some late nights. I worked all weekends but that was because I enjoyed the work a bit too much and got bored pretty easily as I'm not from London.

You are given a stock to analyse every fortnight. You have full access to all the company resources (Bloomberg and TR Datastream are your best friends). You're given templates for the model and note. What you do next is entirely of your own volition.

Undergraduate Economics does not reflect the real world whatsoever and this internship is irrelevant for that purpose. However, if you want to pursue a career in equities analysis (stockpicking), accountancy or really anything that involves understanding how a company operates, this internship is highly applicable and enjoyable.

Serious but friendly. Colleagues were very focussed but very happy to stop for a chat.

Given the circumstances, it was pretty good. I didn't realise until about week 5/8 that my manager actually had several sector's worth of full-time analysts underneath him in addition to 8 interns but somehow still made time for regular 2 hour one-to-one seminars with each intern.

I feel they treat you like a full-time employee from the very beginning. The training and the resources provided are well in excess of what friends at other AMs have received.

I haven't finished my internship yet and have no idea.

It was reasonable. Some social events were provided and interns would frequently have group lunches etc.

Fidelity's compensation package is generous. Living costs were never an issue.

Kings Road, Chelsea. Enough said.

It's London. You can do anything.