Spring Intern Review

This Spring Week was a fantastic experience to help understand the world of banking a little bit more. We were given the time of CEOs, and other high-up employees that helped explain what life in Barclays is like on a day to day basis. I viewed as lot better than expected.

I believe that myself and all of the other candidates felt as highly valued individuals throughout our short week in the headquarters. Not only did we have multiple employees with us throughout the week, but people went above and beyond the minimum expected of them, and was clear they wanted to be there.

As mentioned, there were endless amounts of employees around to answer each and every question that we had, no matter how taboo the topic may have been considered. These people also mentioned honestly their opinions about what would be best, and is much more useful when making a career decision.

Whilst perhaps of little use during my degree, some of the insight I gained will be of much use to me throughout the rest of my life, as it did help me decide a bit more which career I may go into. The information was almost priceless to receive from others.

Before even starting the insight, we were all emailed a structured breakdown of timings for the week, which in itself was very useful as it gave timings down to around 15 minutes, all the way throughout the day. Even more usefully, this timing was largely stuck to for the duration.

It took a little while to get to know the rest of the group. Whilst it was not awkward during this time, there was that slight tense period. Once everyone started to open up a bit, we could all tell that we were like minded people and enjoyed each others company,

We all undertook a type of Emotional Intelligence test, and gained some insight to the different ways people work. Other than that, there was not much training provided, however this was not the aim of this week and would not be fair to judge the week purely on this test.

The Spring Week with Barclays UK gave a wonderful insight to what working full time is like with Barclays UK, as we were able to speak and even shadow people that were doing the roles that we could potentially be doing in a few years time. It was very insightful.

Surprisingly, the culture I had expected was very much different from what I actually saw. This implies that the insight was very much helpful in understanding company culture. The culture itself was also very much positive, and we were shown this multiple times a day by various people on the programme.

I found it to be very valuable as I hadn't seriously considered a career in these sections before.

We were reimbursed generously for our time.

We had various 'speed dating' style events, however I expected more to take place in the evenings.

When they occurred throughout the day, they were very good. I noticed that you were able to talk to whomever you wanted quite freely.

Yes - apart from qualifications, there were sports and other recreational events people could attend.

I would highly recommend this Spring Week programme to a friend. Being with Barclays UK allowed me to discover much more about Barclays and the world of finance in itself; a competitor bank would not have provided such a great insight. We were able to learn so much in such little time.