Intern - Analyst Review

The internship at Barclays Corporate has been a brilliant opportunity to see what it would be like to work in the banking industry and also to see if I would be suited to the culture. However, I did have some negative views of what I thought it would be like to work in corporate banking but I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case. Everybody has been incredibly helpful and even the most senior directors are more than willing to spare their time to talk with you so you can ask any questions about their career or the area that they work in.

I was immediately made to feel very welcome and was introduced to the whole team. Everybody was very helpful and keen to answer the questions that I had.

The support that is given to you is fantastic. Your progress is discussed regularly and feedback is given to help you further develop your skills.

There were times when I didn't have that much to do and then times when I was really busy but this is what work is. It is down to how you manage your time that can make this easier.

The work that I carried out was very important to the team here. It will be given directly to the clients that they visit and so needed to be of the highest quality. Additionally, I helped my line manager forecast his yearly figures by pulling information from a range of programmes.

Thinking back to the 8 weeks that I have spent here with Barclays, I can't believe how my approach has changed to a variety of tasks. Not only were we given extensive training on presentation/communication, we also looked at Financial Markets, Project Management and had specialists from other areas of Barlcays Corporate talk to us about how the work can vary from accross the company. The quality of this training was incredibly high and the skills that we have all taken away from the sessions will be used in our degrees and whichever career we choose to take.

From my point of view this is a difficult one to judge. Having spent time in both the head office and a regional office, the atmosphere is very different in each. The head office is a great place to work and located in Canary Wharf. Despite the fact that it's a very nice building with incredible facilities, I found it easier to work in the regional office. Everybody seemed a little more down to earth and easier to approach - having said that, I never had any major issues contacting anybody at head office either.

The whole process was very well organised and we were regularly updated on what was happening that week. I did feel that there could have been more information given to us before the internship started, although I appreciate there probably wasn't that much to say but maybe just to confirm that everything is still all ok.

Barclays really invested in us over the summer. As I mentioned earlier, we spent several days receiving training on a variety of areas. We were also given time by senior executives and directors to talk through what we were doing throughout our internship. They held breakfasts and presentations so that we had a good opportunity to speak with them.

Barclays' internship programme gives you a great opportunity to find a more permanent role within the compan as they use their internship to fill many of their graduate places.

We had some great events organised for us by Barclays but then also organised our own events - this ranged from nights out with other interns (occassionally with other colleagues too), dragonboat racing, or a meal with our project group. The social side was brilliant.

Again, this is split over 2 different areas. I lived in Milton Keynes during the programme although didn't go out too much there as I was often visiting friends at weekends. MK: much cheaper than London for both living and socialising London: much better for socialising but obviously more expensive. Wider variety of bars/clubs/restaurants. Although we did stumble across a couple of interesting pricelists in places - 6 shots for £36 was a shock.

Again, this hugely varies between the two. MK: quite a strange city and I still can't really work it out. It does have quite a few nice bars and an Oceana, which is always welcome. But there's no comparing it to London. London has everything you can think of. The bars that we went to are all really nice as are the clubs.

In the head office there seems to be lots of opportunities to get involved with sports and other activities. In MK I haven't heard of anything so again it's hard to say.