(Herengracht / The Bank office)
Being a communication intern at a bank may sound a bit off the track and if you are working at the largest European bank, people may start interrogating you about your salary. People often asked me a question of what I am doing at a bank, and well, usually I will spend some time explaining the things that I do at BNP Paribas NL.
What was I doing?
BNP Paribas is an international bank with a local history in the Netherlands for more than 150 years. With such scale, the range of work that I was (and in fact still am) involved is incredible. I worked closely with three major functions, namely internal communications, external communications and event management. For internal communications, the more routinised part, I produced newsletters, videos, intranet content, risk communication documentation and more. On the external part, the more technical component of the work, I worked on SEO, websites and content enrichment. And finally the event management, I facilitated logistics and communications for the representatives of BNP Paribas NL at events like the DACT Fair , organising informational sessions such as a pension fund seminar, internal festivals and even welcoming the global CEO to our Dutch office (which is very intimidating and rewarding)!
Research… the ordeal
It’s all fun and game until April when the research kicked off. It was a big challenge for me, but also my colleagues at the communication departments at all the entities of BNP Paribas in the Netherlands to organize focus groups because April to June is the peak season for transactions and deals. Not only did I take months to schedule a one-hour meeting, some entities even rejected to partake in the whole research due to time constraints! At the end, I was able to conduct 6 focus groups (only 4 are used for the research report) and I travelled to different cities for the focus groups such as Rotterdam and Oosterhout. The research was a great success, accompanied by the focus groups as well as our internal survey.
It’s not what it looks like
People would say working at a bank is, kindly rephrasing, restricted and mundane. But my experience tells me otherwise! Working at BNP Paribas has given me the freedom to work at home and at the office whenever needed, and more importantly my colleagues encouraged me to criticise what they are doing now. Although I must admit that with such a big corporate, bringing changes is not easy, but it is not impossible. The research results in fact allowed me to bring in new initiatives into the organization and was well recognised by the management and executive level.
Want to work in the financial industry?
I have worked at both financial start-up and long-established institution. They gave very different vibes and experiences, however, both are exciting and rewarding. I entered the financial communication field without much financial background knowledge. You should not be deterred just by the fact that it is “outside” the field of communication.
If you like to work in the industry, there are a few crucial questions you may want to ask yourself:
- Can I handle heavy workload, sometimes maybe working overtime?
- Can I deal with the financial jargons?
- Am I detail-oriented?