Internships

Intern profiles

My background
I started by taking economics as one of my GCSE subjects. I continued with it at A level and I've pursued it for my Bachelors as well. My family has lived all over the world but the last couple of years have been predominantly in South East Asia. As you may or may not know, Standard Chartered is quite big in Asia and its high street presence and branding is widespread. I kind of knew a couple of years ago that I wanted to seriously think about a career in finance and decided that I'd seen the brand out there, why not give it a go?

The induction process
I had a lot of contact with the recruitment staff prior to my arrival. They sent out introduction packs and even at the interviews they were very helpful in asking, "Do you have questions you want to address right now before we go any further?" The induction day itself was well organised. We all met at a central location and then we were brought to the boardroom where numerous staff from different departments gave us a one hour lecture on the scope of their jobs. The day culminated with the Europe CEO coming in and letting us pick his brains to see what questions we had to ask about the programme, the Bank and its operations. There's definitely a culture within Standard Chartered of saying that just because you're new or at a junior level doesn't mean your input isn't as valuable to the people at the top.

The support I received on the Internship Programme
At Standard Chartered, junior staff are very fortunate to have exposure to senior members. During our internship we met the Europe CEO, the board members, the Chairman, and the Group CEO as well.

A typical day
I'd say my typical day starts with coming in about half an hour earlier either to look at a few emails which might be urgent or just brush up on the global news. Being in London, we're ideally located between the time zones in Asia and the time zones in America. I usually start my day off by either catching up on financial news or answering the tons of emails that have come in. At lunchtime, you want to catch up on international news again because the American markets have just opened. After that, the rest of the day starts with the Americas coming to you and asking you questions - we need this to be done, can you help us with this? The work never stops - so it's just how on top of the game you can be.

My top tip for graduates
If you're looking to apply as an intern or as an international graduate, you have to keep in mind that you are only going to get out as much as you put in. If you want to gain as much exposure as possible and really be involved, let people know. There's definitely a culture within Standard Chartered where staff are very open to giving you more, and they'll be quite happy to say ok, you did that very well, but you could have improved it in some ways. As long as you can take constructive criticism and see that you could have done something better, then you'll go far.

What surprised me most about Standard Chartered
I've known for a couple of years that Standard Chartered is growing very fast, and I've definitely known about its international network, but I think people fail to realise just how significant it is until they're actually part of it. Within the UK alone the number of different nationalities is close to 100. For such a small office, that's immense. The other thing is that if you try and get as involved as possible, you could very well be thrown in at the deep end. That's a great way to learn as long as you're prepared to do the work and be open to the ideas and the challenges that await you.