Intern Review

For me, this internship has been a life-changing experience, enabling me to come in with limited knowledge of financial markets, then face a steep learning curve, developing an amazing amount of knowledge and number of skills. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here at Barclays, feeling welcomed by all colleagues and supported constantly.

I have felt consistently valued by a multitude of colleagues, with them integrating me as part of the team as soon as I was introduced to them. The projects I have been set have truly helped me contribute to the advancement of the desk by assisting traders in understanding current and upcoming regulations, as well as extra colour on policy outlooks.

Barclays provides every intern with a buddy to provide additional help to supplement that of your assigned line manager. Two performance reviews during the process enabled me to recognize my strengths, along with any areas of weakness to address in the future, this helped me become and more effective and efficient intern.

I have been kept constantly busy, but not to the extent where I feel the workload is not manageable. If I completed any of my assigned projects early, I could always ask for extra work, which would then be provided to me. Moreover, I found the work to be a good mix of different tasks, designed by my manager to make it as interesting as possible for me.

I was given a fair level of responsibility, including having to quickly analyse the day's news headlines and summarise these in a morning comment to give the traders a brief introduction to the market drivers of that day. I was also responsible for providing my manager with my opinion on the future path of the British economy, then debate my opinion with the rest of the team to come to a consensus on what the team thinks is the most probable outcome.

Going further into my career path following this internship, the extraordinary array of knowledge and skills I have developed during these 9 weeks will greatly assist my endeavours. This covers my programming and markets knowledge/understanding as well as many soft skills, including: teamwork, confidence and the ability to work under pressure.

The general atmosphere across both of my rotations has been brilliant. The trading floors provide a great buzz of excitement, motivating you as you carry out your daily tasks. This atmosphere has been very motivated but also very welcoming; with any questions I have being embraced by my colleagues, as well as an abundance of support being constantly available.

The internship has been extremely well structured by colleagues in HR, starting with an initial week of programme to give a general overview of the bank and the Markets business in particular. This provided great insight before we joined our desks on the first of the two 4 week rotations. Multiple events were also organized, ranging from Q&A sessions with senior management, to intern social events and networking drinks. The whole process for me has been run extremely smoothly, with any event details being clearly communicated well in advance.

For the first week, Barclays provided their professional financial markets trainers to explain how financial markets work in generally, and more specifically, how derivatives markets operate and which instruments are traded and hedged within these. Along with this excellent training, a Macro lecture series was designed to expose all interns to the majority of desks within the Macro Sales and Trading businesses so we could develop our understanding beyond the two rotations we directly experienced, this was very useful.

I would not hesitate to instantly take the opportunity if offered a place on the Barclays Graduate Programme. My experience here has been extremely positive, enabling me to learn tremendous amounts, meet a vast amount of amazing people, and enable me to realise which products within trading do I enjoy and appreciate the most. I have thoroughly enjoyed the exposure to 2 completely different desks, enabling me to develop an appreciation of which working environment and asset class matches my character the most within Barclays.

Many events were organised by HR for the interns to attend, including a senior networking evening, a university-specific drinks, Macro drinks, and evenings with our specific teams. Moreover, every week my fellow interns were very sociable, always willing to go out during the evenings when available to get to know each other more and discuss the different tasks we were carrying out. This resulted in a great social scene where all the interns got to know each other very well, creating a friendly environment where everyone is willing to help one another to complete their work when facing problems.

Since I lived at home during my internship and travelled in via train each day to Canary Wharf, the cost of living was not a relevant factor. In this area, food and drink can be relatively expensive depending on where you choose, but there also several comfortable bars with great deals dotted around the area with plenty of space to fit many interns in.

The Nightlife throughout Canary Wharf is amazing, with many bars/pubs being open regularly, catering for office workers. A great mix of venues were available to ensure no intern was ever bored due to having to go to the same bar each night. This area is a great hub with a real buzz around it, especially with the multitude of amazing buildings that light up the area when it gets dark.

Several events unrelated to the work of our desks were organised, including a Citizenship Day, in order to make interns appreciate the value of Stewardship that Barclays holds dearly. This enabled me to develop my confidence and teamwork skills by meeting new interns from across the bank's divisions to come together and solve a problem a local charity was facing. In addition, a football match and pub quiz were also organised for interns to attend.