Summer Intern Review

The internship at Barclays was a good choice. I got my own set of tasks which I could first learn and, later on, was responsible for. It was possible for me to see my achievemetns during my internship. It was a good mix of daily and longer-term tasks. I enjoyed the working atmosphere and liked my spot in the office.

I got rather quick integrated in the team. It was always easy for me to appraoch them. And they always took time to answer questions, When comign up with own ideas, they were eager to listen. I much appreciate the diversity within my team - basically everbody has a differetn national background. That helped to see things from different perspectives.

My line manager was very caring. He was sitting enxt to me, so it was very easy to ask questions and to get further explanation when needed. I got a clear set of goals which I had to accomplish during my internship. I had regular catch-ups, to ensure that I was on my way. Furthermore, I had the chance to meet several Ds & MDs.

Most of my tasks were the creation of daily reporting. This inhcluded gathering data, manipulation and finally creating the reports. I never felt broed, sometimes (when my reports needed more in depth analysis) I got quite busy - moer than I expected. Nevertheless, my line manager took care that I do not spend too much time in the office. An internship should not be only work, you need time to refresh your batteries.

During the internship I gained more and more responsibility. I started with small parts of the report, whereas at the end I provided several reports a day to a wider audience. It was good to see which impact some of the reports I provided had on the decisons within the company. I think it was a fair amount of responsibility for an internship.

The was a strong focus on excel skills - as you would expect in a bank. It was easy for me to apply my knowledge on the given tasks. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to focus on parts where I wanted to improve myself (VBA, for ecample). I am sure that the insights I gained will be valuable to me in the future, and I once again learned how important excellent excel skills are for a job in the industry,

The general atmosphere at the Barclays office is great. Very intellignet and approachable people. I got to know a lot of different people and almost erverybody had something unique and extraordinary. I really liked the diversity within the firm. it was really easy to ask colleagues for a coffee to get to know more about their roles.

During the internship everhting was organised in a good way. A bit strange was that contact persons in HR and changed a lot during the time, but they managed to help with all issues. The only issues was the horrible communication before the internship. After having an oral confirmation it took several months and a lot of emails to get the contract.

There were two days of formal training as well as an hour to introduce us to the online learning portal. The offer seemed to be quite good, unfortunately I have not had too much time to make use of it. My normal tasks took almost all of my time and at the end of the day I was not concentrated enough to use the ressources. There were a couple of sessiosn with senior speakers - there could be more of them especially bringing in more people from differen parts of the firm.

At the end of the internship grad places are offered to good interns.

There were over 300 interns - so impossible to get in touch with all of them. after the introduction there were no further events organized on a broader level. So difficult to meet interns from other parts of the bank. Exception was the charity challenge - a project where 6 interns from different divisons worked together to counsel a local charity - great project!

The cost of living was very high. I knew that London is expensive, but nevertheless I was shocked when I saw how much money I had to spend on everday items. Especially housing is expensive. I got a room in a flatshare which was not really good, but expensive. Please plan well in advance and look what you will get for your money.

Not important to me.

There were different opportunities - some sport activites as they Olypics took place.