Business Placement Manager Review

We all had placements within Wealth and personal banking, mine was within HSBC Insurance UK. We also had group projects for employee resource groups, a recommended volunteering day, and a challenge to raise as much money as possible in a team for charity (we as a cohort chose MIND charity). My day to day placement activity involved checking in with my placement manager and completing tasks to help out my team such a analysing excel reports, attending zoom meetings etc. I also had an ongoing project within my placement to work on a proposal for the insurance leadership.

I was given a lot of responsibility during the placement. I was expected to summarise performance of the insurance business from the previous week for a superior before a weekly meeting with the insurance CEO. I also was given multiple presentations to deliver to superiors and stakeholders. Within our charity fundraising challenge we were given complete freedom to organise meetings as we pleased and to choose our method of fundraising ourselves also. This is similar to the procedure during our other employee resource project.

I have developed my presentation skills and excel skills a lot through the tasks I was set. We have also had sessions to learn better presentation skills as well as excel masterclasses. We also had development sessions on self awareness, stress management and interpersonal skills. Also with all the different sessions we were able to develop our time management skills. I also feel as though my networking skills were developed through meetings etc. My insurance and investment knowledge was developed also.

We had multiple avenues we could go down for support and guidance. We had an on programme manager, a graduate coach of who are both current graduate scheme colleagues. In addition I had my placement manager, and another manager who I shadowed a lot during the 8 weeks. I had weekly meetings with my graduate coach and we had milestones to talk about as well as enough time for me to update him on my experiences and ask for advice. I was going through a difficult time personally during the internship as my mum was ill, and HSBC and my managers were really supportive.

The company culture and general atmosphere was vey supportive and helpful. There was a focus on wellbeing both mental and physical as well as corporate social responsibility and sustainability. The values of teamwork were very obvious too. Despite the internship being virtual due to the pandemic the culture was felt. Colleagues were happy to contribute and help out interns whenever we asked. I had multiple calls with people in roles I was interested in and they were extremely happy to give me their time. We also had social events with the other interns which was really nice.

I really enjoyed my placement as I learned a lot and was pushed beyond my comfort zone to develop. The atmosphere was felt despite it being virtual and my team had weekly socials which was enjoyable. I really enjoyed the intern roulette program also which allowed us to connect with interns we didn't know. This was very beneficial. I enjoyed the different elements of the internship as it extended past just the placement and technical experience.

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