Incident Specialist Review

I have been based in a lovely team who have really helped me to settle in. I enjoyed the work I've been doing a lot and when there has been something else I wanted to look at in another department they are more than happy to arrange it for me, and for me to take the time out to do so.

Many of my colleagues are really happy to have my help, and have trusted me with their work. They are happy to help me when I need it, but they make me feel like my work is appreciated!

My line manager has been excellent with giving support whenever I have needed it, she takes a lot of time out of her very busy schedule and when she can't help she always points me in the right direction to someone else who can. All of the managers in the team are happy to help with any of my questions.

Some days I haven't stopped but others have been fairly relaxed, it depends what is going on in the team and at what point in the quarter we are as to how much work we have on, but I have never been too bored, and I've had help to handle days when they are a lot busier.

I have been trusted with many tasks which at the start of my internship I didn't think I would be doing. I haven't just been given jobs that have no real meaning, I have been working on tasks that have really helped the team and made a big difference.

The skills I have learnt from this internship, especially people skills, will help me with any job I get in the future. I've been able to learn how to deal with different people, and by using courses on their training software I've learnt a lot about how to lead and how to plan a career for example. Lloyds invest a lot in colleague development and they have helped me massively!

My office is really big, but very friendly. There are lots of differet departments all together which makes it easier to get to know more people and to attend learning hours with different teams. Everyone is very happy to help each other out.

The induction event on the first day gave a great background of what the company is all about. We had a booklet to help guide us through the first 3 weeks with a lot of information in about development and good places to get help, as well as information about the checkpoint calls throughout the internship. There has been good guidance for my line manager about the referral process onto the graduate scheme also.

They invest a lot of time in development. My line manager encouraged me taking time out to do courses online or to go to another department of my interest and shadow someone for half a day or so. There are always emails about the current master classes running and my team worked hard to ensure my internship met my development needs.

Lloyds banking group is a massive organisation making it fairly easy to find a job near to home in the area I want to work. If I didn't want to go straight into a job, they also make the process of moving from the internship onto the graduate scheme very simple. They seem to invest a lot into making sure colleagues are happy with lots of benefits like healthcare and cheap holidays etc.

We were all placed into flats with other interns on the scheme, we didn’t all work in the same building but all of us working in the same area were put together in a flat making socialising with other interns very easy. This made it a lot easier to settle in especially in the first week or so!

Cardiff is a little expensive when going out but if you know the good places to go there is somewhere for every budget. The living costs are fairly okay though and the area if lovely.

Nightlife is great here; there are streets of pubs and clubs which are lively almost every day of the week. There is plenty to do to keep it different with lots of live music acts across the weekend as well as some quieter pubs for a few drinks at the end of the week.

In my team we did a few 'work lunches' where we all went for lunch together, and there were one or two big events mostly charity based ones. There has also been a lot of talk about Christmas parties for this December.