Spring Intern Review

It was 2016 Barclays Spring Week in Personal & Corporate Banking and Barclaycard. The programme was great, with several presentations about divisions within PCB&B as well as workshops on personal brand, ideation. We also worked on a group project and presented on the last day of the programme. I enjoyed it so much and have experienced much about the culture and working environment of Barclays which is awesome!

I feel the programme was valued much by the bank. They invited senior staff to give presentations instead of graduates. For PCB&B, they also invited the CEO for a 15-minute long Q&A session which I have never expected!! People are all very friendly and were very glad to talk to us! I got introduced to different people during the week.

We were always very welcome to ask questions and help. Staff were very happy to talk to us!

Absolutely! While talking to people in Barclays, they shared a lot about how they end up working in this industry which has helped me think more about my career. They also shared their experience in the industry and skills they have developed, eg leadership. Group work has also help me boost communication skills. It was a great chance to meet different people from other universities and to work with them on projects.

We were asked to download Barclays app before the week started which helped a lot in communication between the staff and interns. We understood the arrangement in advanced which has helped me a lot in planning my week. The programme consisted of presentations, networking, group projects, work shadowing and workshops which I think have let us fully understand the bank. The only little room that I think can be improved is that the week was not totally planned and there were little changes during the week that. But otherwise everything was good!

People were nice and friendly and welcoming! The office also creates a very relaxing environment for people working there.

We were given different tasks which let us understand ourselves more and improve ourselves. We also got seniors to listen to our presentations.

We visited different floors and talked to different people which has helped me understand better how it is like working in Barclays. If we could actually work shadow in a team, that is really seeing them work on their projects, it would be so much better.

After coming to the programme I finally understand how cultures can be different in different banks! Visiting floors and talking to people helped a lot!

I have realised what I am more interested in and what I am not. And I have understood more what division suits me.

Those who do not live or study in London were provided accommodation and everyone was reimbursed expenses.

Yes there was a graduate networking session and a networking evening on Wednesday. But I think it would be better if we had more, such as having networking lunches.

Graduate Networking was quite structured and we were split into groups and graduate went to different groups to talk to us for about 20 minutes and swap. Networking evening was more free that we walk around and talk to different people. I personally prefer the way the evening was run because I can talk to people who work in divisions that I am interested in.

Yes, through conversations with the employee.

Yes, absolutely a good way to understand what banking is and our interest, as well as the culture of the bank.