Barclays Spring Week Review

I quite enjoyed the placement and it was well structured. Some elements were less relevant to what I was interested in, so I didn't enjoy them as much, but that was personal preference.

I was treated really well throughout my whole experience by everyone I came into contact with. I definitely felt included and wanted! Members of the company were more than happy to stay in touch via LinkedIn etc and many offered their advice and insights. Overall, a very friendly place to be.

We were well supported during the insight. Quite a lot of the sessions were quite information-heavy, and some had especially technical sections, which I understood less as a non-finance student. However, in terms of support from the Barclays team, they were excellent in advising with any questions and accomodating us.

I learnt quite a bit about the financial industry, which will be useful in my future career choices. There was a great soft skills session at the beginning of the week, but there was less of this interactive/workshop style set up as the week went on. Would've loved more of this format!

Very well structured and organised. We were given a schedule at the beginning of the week and the whole process ran like clockwork, mostly due to the excellent organisation of the Barclays team in charge of the insight week. Clear and transparent assessment at the end of the week too!

Everyone was friendly and very welcoming. At times, due to the large amount of talks, it could get a bit more tedious as there was a drop in energy. If there were more energisers, active participation activities, group work etc to maintain energy and insight, that would've been of benefit to the programme.

There was a personal development session at the beginning of the week which was really good, and I enjoyed the public speaking training skills session. We also learnt a bit of code which was good! Some of the sessions were less interactive but we were always given lots of opportunities to ask questions.

The spring week was more talk-based so we had little opportunity for a hands-on experience, which would've been nice. However, we got to speak to lots of different employees and find out about their experiences at Barclays. In particular, we had lots of opportunities to ask questions after nearly every talk.

I definitely got a feeling of the company culture and values at Barclays. The values were often emphasised by people that I spoke to, and employees really seemed to enjoy their working environment and their teams. It seemed a friendly and supportive place to work, which was reinforced by the people I met.

The content definitely helped me to further my industry knowledge and acted as a really good springboard for considering entering the financial services industry. Some days were more relevant than others to my personal interests, but overall I took a lot from it and will use this knowledge to decide on my future career path.

I was paid well for my time at Barclays and given money each day for breakfast/lunch.

We met new people from the firm essentially every day. There was a specific 2 hour networking session on the first day, but there were also plenty of informal opportunities as well. The people we got to speak to came from a variety of industries and backgrounds, which was definitely beneficial.

There weren't that many social opportunities. The one networking session we had was good, but maybe a bit too long.

We heard a lot about the diversity networks at Barclays, such as the women's group WIN, LGBTQ+ group Spectrum and youth group Elevate. There were also charity drives and schemes which employees could choose to get involved with, which is great. I'm not sure about any other activities outside of work.

I would recommend this insight to people considering a career in finance who are looking to get an idea of a range of potential sectors that they could get involved in. It was a bit talk heavy, but overall, I definitely benefitted from the experience and met some great people.