Equity Sales & Trading Summer Analyst Review

I had 2 rotations on the trading floor, and found that I had a great time with my first team, but the same couldn't be said about my second. At such a huge organisation with so many desks even within Equity Sales & Trading, each desk has quite a unique culture and working atmosphere. As a result, your experience can vary hugely depending on what desk you're placed on.

The first desk tried to involve me as much as possible by talking me through their work. As a Sales & Trading intern, you can't actually talk to clients or trade, but I still felt that everyone was actively trying to help me understand the work and improve my skill set. The second desk was much colder. I felt that people were unapproachable and mostly uninterested. I felt that they saw me more as a burden than anything else, and that makes your experience uneasy as an intern.

My line manager on the first rotation was great; he took a lot of time to discuss what skills he wanted me to develop, as well as how I can achieve my objectives during the internship. He gave me a lot of guidance on how to go about this, from introducing me to people to talking me through his work. I always felt that I could go to him for help. I also thought that he was investing heavily into developing my transferable skills, not just the technical on the job skills. My second line manager was much less helpful. He was always too busy to take time, and on the rare occasion that he did, he was impatient and shouty. I ended up having to rely a lot on my previous line manager. Maybe it's just a different management style, but in all honesty, I felt that he couldn't care less about my experience as an intern, let alone aiding my learning and development.

This can depend on how much work you are set by your manager. I still found myself being fairly busy because I was proactively looking for work to do for other desks, as well as doing my own projects and asking to present to people around the trading floor.

Not much responsibility, but this is more due to interns being unable to do sales pitches or trade than the programme itself. People at other banks in Sales & Trading seemed to find this as well, so its to be expected in this department.

Not relevant to my degree, but things like presentation skills, interpersonal skills etc. will be helpful in whatever job I go into in the future.

The trading floor is generally very energetic and constantly busy, but the atmosphere can vary massively depending on your desk. Cash desks are the most vibrant and dynamic, whereas derivatives and structured products desks are a bit more quiet. This is probably a reflection of the type of people working on these desks.

The programme was well organised for the duration of the internship, but I felt like they gave us very little information beforehand, leaving me a bit unsure of what to expect or if there was anything I needed to prepare for.

The first week of the internship is training, so they did invest a fair amount of time and resources into our training. However, I felt that most sessions were a bit irrelevant and a bit general. It would have been nicer to receive more job specific training, as I felt a bit lost when I first started on the trading floor. Once on the trading floor, the personal development and training was heavily dependant on your line manager. We also had weekly teach-in sessions which were useful too.

You can be given a returning offer for a full time position. Theoretically, this is dependant on your performance, but in reality, a lot of it is luck, demand from desks etc. From our class, just over 30% received a returning offer.

I got on well with the other inters, so did go out with them a few times. It's really up to you to do what you want in terms of socialising.

Expensive, but this is expected as it is London

Standard for London, there's always something to do.

Again, this is dependent on you. If you want to, you can socialise with your colleagues. They also provided us with half a day of volunteering which was nice.