Company details

London, UK

HEADCOUNT

10000+

ORG TYPE

Corporate

SECTOR

Finance

WEBSITE

https://www.hsbc.com/

About the company

HSBC is a global bank and financial services group serving individuals, businesses, and institutional clients. The company offers retail and wealth banking, commercial banking, and corporate and investment banking services, alongside functions like risk, operations, finance, and technology. HSBC runs large service and operations hubs in multiple countries in addition to customer-facing branches and offices. The company’s student and graduate pathways span banking, markets, technology, and relationship management roles.

Locations and presence

HSBC operates across a large international office network with major hubs in places like London, Hong Kong, and other regional centres, alongside sizeable service operations sites in markets such as the Philippines. The company offers hybrid working in some roles, but published guidance and reporting shows HSBC also sets clear expectations for regular in-office attendance in parts of the organisation.

Palpable Score

79.0

/ 100

HSBC is one of the more accessible large banks for early-career candidates because the company runs insight programmes, internships, apprenticeships, and graduate programmes across multiple countries and job families. HSBC is also clearer than many peers on what the recruitment journey looks like, including timed stages and assessment formats, although pay transparency still varies a lot by country and role. Early-career outcomes look positive through visible progression paths, but HSBC does not publish consistent, company-owned progression and retention metrics for graduates.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

18.5

/ 20

The company advertises multiple structured entry points across stages, including Insight Programmes (1–5 days), internships/work placements, graduate programmes, and degree apprenticeships.

HSBC provides a “Find a programme” hub and a Talent Community signup to track openings by location and programme, which supports recurring intake rather than one-off hiring.

The company explicitly positions internships as a pathway into graduate programmes, signalling a connected pipeline instead of isolated intern hiring.

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Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

16.0

/ 20

The company publishes an application guide that lays out a three-step process with expected time commitments (online application, online assessment, and assessment centre or Super Day format).

HSBC states that candidates get online support, practice assessments, feedback, and adjustments through the process, which helps first-time applicants prepare and request accommodations.

The company still leaves gaps on what “good performance” looks like at each stage for different programmes, with many specifics (question types and case formats) more commonly described by third-party prep sites and candidate reports than by HSBC.

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Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

17.0

/ 20

The company’s graduate programme listings commonly include structured rotation models, such as four rotations on certain operations tracks, which creates built-in breadth and learning time.

HSBC graduate postings in markets like the Philippines describe on-the-job training, mentoring, role rotation, and online and classroom learning sessions, plus special projects aimed at leadership skills.

The company’s recruitment materials describe job simulations and assessment-centre style “work you’d actually do,” which tends to align onboarding and early learning with real tasks rather than generic classroom-only training.

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Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

15.0

/ 20

The company has early-career job ads in some countries that publish concrete pay (for example, a monthly gross salary figure for certain Technology Graduate Programme postings), but HSBC does not standardise public pay ranges across most early-career listings.

HSBC pay benchmarks for apprentices and graduate development roles are widely available through large salary datasets, which supports basic pay predictability even when HSBC postings omit ranges.

The company offers stable, contracted roles within a regulated bank environment, but recent public reporting about cost-saving drives and organisational change adds uncertainty about team stability in some areas for new joiners.

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Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

12.5

/ 20

The company frames internships and work placements as feeders into graduate programmes, but HSBC also notes that graduate-role availability can be limited in some locations, which makes outcomes more dependent on region and business demand.

HSBC shows common early-career progression patterns on LinkedIn, with many analysts and graduate hires moving into associate-level roles over the following years across business and function tracks, but HSBC does not publish promotion rates or typical timelines.

The company does not publish consistent, programme-level retention and conversion statistics for graduates and interns, so candidates have limited hard data on long-term outcomes beyond role descriptions, pay datasets, and anecdotal reviews.

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