Company experience - Santander Universities Internship

Published Thursday, 21^st November, 2019 in Careers

This is the second in our series of testimonials about the Santander Universities SME Internship Programme. The Programme is an entrepreneurial internship programme that provides students and recent graduates paid work experience with local businesses, which City is part of as one of the benefits of our close partnership with Santander.

We've spoken to Simi Khagram, Recruitment Assistant for KSEYE a specialist lender, with a focus on providing short-term loans to real estate investors secured against UK property, to find out about their experience hiring City student Romualdas Scepkauskas as an intern.

Why did you decide to use the Santander SME funding through City, University of London?

One of our company directors, Nikes Khagram, attended City. He heard about the Santander-City SME funding scheme through his network and thought it may suit our company’s needs.

Tell us about your intern? What were you doing and why did you hire them?

Romualdas Scepkauskas was hired as a Credit Risk Analyst Intern.

We were looking to expand our analyst team to support the growth of the business and wanted to test any potential candidates prior to offering them full-time positions.

How has this intern(s) helped you and your team/business?

Romualdas has been a great asset to the company. He has created advanced excel spreadsheets and run financial analysis on large data sets. He also analysed loan applications in accordance with the Company’s lending policies. He has written many reports and executive summaries for investors. Also, he aided in the writing of our annual company report for 2018-19.

How do you think this experience has helped your intern?

Romualdas has grown in confidence during his time with KSEYE. He has been taught a variety of excel skills; he is now comfortable analysing large sets of loan data and coding macros. He has had many opportunities to practise his reporting skills, for example, he wrote a monthly industry update for our largest institutional investor and also, he co-wrote our company’s annual report. His financial industry knowledge has increased whilst working for KSEYE, and his writing skills are also vastly improved.

If you could give a student thinking of doing an internship one piece of advice, what would it be?

I would advise students to ask lots of questions. Asking questions shows you are motivated and really want to learn about the industry. The more questions you ask, the more you will learn about the job, company and industry. Also, ask to get involved in lots of different projects. Working on a variety of projects will help you figure out your interests and it also encourages different people/teams at the company to view you positively.

What is your intern doing now?

Our intern is completing his internship and we intend to offer him a full-time position at the company.

Would you recommend the scheme to other employers? And why/not?

Yes, the speed networking event was a great way to meet vetted, professional candidates.

Also, the Santander funding and internship allowed us to test candidates prior to offering them graduate positions at the company.