Spring Insight Intern Review

All the staff we met were really friendly and lovely and very willing to talk about their experiences over their careers and share personal insight about the industry. I was also pleasantly surprised that all the talks managed to be genuinely interesting, even if we had several hours of them a day.

It was always stressed that incoming Barclays staff would receive a lot of support from the firm and even during the spring week it was evident that the existing staff were interested in being involved in engaging us and finding how we fit into Barclays.

We had many networking opportunities and work shadowing sessions where we could freely ask questions. We were also assigned buddies who had recently joined Barclays on the graduate program.

Working quickly in new groups and participating in a debate helped to develop soft work skills. Being from a non-finance background, I found that the knowledge gleaned about the industry over the week, both from Barclays staff as well as fellow students, helped a lot to build up some background knowledge about finance.

It was a Front Office insight and we were exposed to all the divisions within it. After introductory talks from each division, we had case studies and work shadowing sessions to help what working in those divisions would be like. It was great to get both an opinion and a chance to form our own after being exposed to the work.

Group work was highly encouraged and I believe that helped the students bond quickly. The attitude and culture established by the staff was very friendly.