Digital Transformations Intern Review

As part of the internship Programme I spent the majority of my time on placement. This is where I joined a team in the bank and joined their meetings or did work for them. My placement was in Retail Digital X.
Interns also do a business project in a group of 4-6 people, which is then presented in the second last week of the internship. One afternoon a week is assigned to working on that.
There is also time for self-led learning, speaker sessions, and wellbeing activities throughout the week.

I was given more responsibility than I was expecting. Within my first week I had started a piece of work that was then presented in a team meeting a couple of weeks later. It was checked over regularly by my manager and I knew I could ask any questions I needed to so it was not stressful but good to feel that I was being useful and producing something that would be helpful to my team.

The main skill that I have developed is digital literacy. When I joined the internship Programme I wasn't very confident at using Excel, but after getting help from a colleague on my team and completing online learning modules I feel much more confident.
Besides digital literacy I have definitely developed my networking skills. I had to practice this to meet and connect with other interns, but I also got in contact with more senior members of the bank and set up meetings to expand my network.

Every intern is assigned a graduate buddy who you have weekly catch-ups with. My buddy was excellent and very supportive, she gave a lot of good advice and made sure that any problems I had were resolved.
You also get the support of your line manager and wider team who are there to provide you with work and answer any questions you may have. I was a bit nervous before starting about being thrown in the deep end but that wasn't the case at all.

Very positive. I think there's a stereotype with banking that everyone is very cut throat and trying to push people out of the way to get to the top but that wasn't at all the experience I had. The majority of people I interacted with were very friendly and helpful.
I also worried about the work-life balance, thinking that I would be expected to put in very long hours but again I was pleasantly surprised. There was great emphasis on wellbeing and not stretching yourself too thin.

Given the programme is 8 weeks long I thought that it would drag a bit but I can honestly say that it didn't. I'm not saying the work I was doing was always very exciting, a lot of excel spreadsheets, however I wasn't bored. One thing I will say is that my manager was away for a lot of the programme so at that point I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as I didn't feel I had as much work to do but that was purely situational.

Yes