Graduate in Finance

I initially applied online for the Graduate in Finance program in early March, the process was fairly simple and consisted of just submitting a CV without the ability to upload a cover letter. I received an online assessment invitation half way through May, this concerned both numerical and logical tests. Then I received an invitation for an interview through a call at the end of May.


The interview day consisted of an introduction and welcome where more information was shared about the way they work at RBS, what is important to them and all the benefits related to joining their team. After this 4 assessors joined the room and there was a group exercise. The group exercise entailed a fictional bank meeting where the mobile banking app was up for discussion, several discussion points and a delivery objective were given. Everyone, 6 of us, was given 15 minutes of prep time with a 10 page handout. During the meeting, which lasted 30-40 minutes, additional information was revealed in the form of tweets, news reports etc., the idea being that we should incorporate all this new information on the fly. A small recap of the meeting results ended the group exercise.

While the assessors deliberated the results we received a small tour of the office and outside area and heard more about what it is like to work at RBS and were given some examples of events that RBS organizes and partakes in.

Then upon returning to the office every participant was invited to an individual interview with two interviewers. The main interviewer worked in the NatWest Markets branch of RBS. This started off by me having to explain what I know about RBS. The main focus of the interview at RBS is no doubt the competency or 'fit' questions. There were a lot of questions asking for examples of when you were in a certain situation and how did you handle it, such as 'give me an example of a time where you did the right thing'. The interviewers structured this by going over the bank's values, which they call "Standards", and asking competency questions related to each particular value. Sprinkled in between were several more directly related Finance questions (how can you value a bond, what derivatives do you know, who are our customers etc.).


The people seemed very friendly and work/life balance seems to be important. From what I've been told RBS is involved in a lot of community projects and gives its employees the freedom to organize so called employee clubs, think "moms and dads" or a running group. I've only been to one of the two office buildings as the interview was there but it seemed nice. It has those leisure areas that you can find in most offices these days with some consoles and looked nice and modern.