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I found the internship very entertaining and sociable, and felt I got on very well with the other interns. It was generally light-hearted and fun, with the organisers making sure it wasn’t too serious all the time. It also offered a good insight of operations and middle/back office as a whole, which meant it served its purpose.

I felt reasonably well valued during my time at the firm; despite the ‘week’ being only three days we were provided with notebooks, and guides to all the other interns, the local area, and the firm as a whole. We also spent two of the days at a hotel with excellent catering and all expenses were paid for.

Because the programme was only three days long, there was not a big need for the staff to provide guidance/support but they were very helpful; offering their email for any questions regarding future application processes and queries about the events of the insight week. The staff were also friendly and approachable.

Due to the short space of time allocated to the programme, it was more orientated to increasing knowledge of the work rather than building skills. However, there were sessions on ‘building a personal brand’ and how to network effectively, which we were then able to utilise in one of the networking sessions later in the week.

The insight was well-structured, with the first day taking place on the company’s main building on the first day where work shadowing took place. The following two days were based in a hotel, with members of staff presenting and networking with the interns during structured sessions that were generally well ordered and prepared.

The general atmosphere of the insight was light-hearted, friendly and informative, with an emphasis on enjoyment and education. We were able to ask questions about anything at any time and the organisers were happy to discuss anything over one of the free muffins or lunch-time burgers provided by the excellent hotel catering.

As mentioned before, the insight week was only 3 days long so it was very difficult for the company to invest in the personal training and development of the interns but they did give informative presentations on general skills needed for internship-seeking or job-seeking Î÷¹ÏÊÓƵs at our stage of university and career.

Despite the short-time it was possible to ascertain a relatively good picture of what working at the company full-time would be like. The shadowing on the first day at the offices gave us the chance to ask any questions of the employee about their work and although I did not get to see any work being done, I was able to determine if it was something I would want to pursue in the future.

The insight week did contain a couple of talks and presentations about the company culture but I felt that due to the size of such a company this culture was more applicable to that specific division and that specific office rather than the company as a whole. I also tend to get the impression that without witnessing the culture in an office environment it is difficult to determine the truth behind the talk.

After the three short days I was able to decide whether Operations and/or middle/back office of an investment bank was something I wanted to pursue in the future, or whether I would prefer something similar at either a different firm or in a different department or office of the same firm.

This took almost 2 months but I was eventually reimbursed for my train travel in full.

Yes, during our time we had a ‘speed-networking’ session where current employees spent about 5 minutes at each table in the room talking to us about their jobs and answering our questions about their roles. I felt that all the employees were very honest and approachable which helped us interns to gain as much knowledge about the job as possible. There was also a short work-shadowing aspect.

There was an event organised where we were put into teams to find and complete tasks around the local area on one of the evenings which boosted morale and rapport between the interns, although this was not particularly well-structured. Otherwise the interns staying in the hotel organised social events for the evening between themselves.

I think there was a brief session on the volunteering etc. available to employees but this was not particularly memorable.

Yes, overall it was a good use of my time and useful on a CV, although unpaid.