Intern Review

Considering it was a nine week internship Barclays organised plenty of intern events for us to enjoy such as pub quizzes, hackathons, talks by the most senior colleagues, etc. I loved the people at Barclays and the culture, so I definitely have some thoughts of coming back for a full time job.

The culture at Barclays is great - everyone is so supportive and helpful. Their RISES values seem to have taken on board by all employees. I felt respected and valued with my contributions for a project. Even the more senior colleagues listen to your thoughts with interest even if you're only around for nine weeks!

Speaking as someone who needed work adjustment for the internship Barclays were incredible in providing support I needed to do my best work. The team I worked with adapted to my needs and even my manager was excellent at making sure I felt supported. Getting asked if I was ok everyday!

It's important to bear in mind that it is only a nine week internship - you are not expected to be involved in a large and long term project unless you could make a valued contribution to it. But it is also about seeing the end results of your project, so I was given few short-term projects which kept me busy the majority of the time. I generally like to be busy every minute of the day, but I was given plenty to do, so you will never be sitting on your hands doing nothing all day.

I felt that with projects I had I was expected to lead and act on my initiative. I knew the projects I was doing had been done many times for different reasons by other colleagues, so I knew I was not getting an intern-designed project for the purpose of keeping me busy. I was doing the work that everyone was doing, so I had plenty of responsibility.

The skills developed may help with my degree in terms of writing, approaches, etc but obviously it won't help with the academic knowledge side of the degree. I do feel I've learnt a lot around soft skills like communications, creative thinking, time management etc which will massively help with my career progression.

The atmosphere was great. Obviously everyone was busy with their work, but this does not mean that no-one was chatting and just generally catching up. It's not too noisy and you won't be scolded if you attempted to talk to a colleague. The kitchen area is always booming with chatting colleagues.

I would say that it was incredibly well organised given it is only nine weeks. There was two full days of training before the start of the internship which was hosted at an external site. Plenty of events were arranged throughout the internship which made sure we continued to engage with other interns from other areas of work.

As I previously said, there was a two full days of training at an external site and I can tell you that it involved a very early start! There was plenty of training to do and you could always sign up to a learning course if you wanted to expand your knowledge in a particular area.

It is very appealing because I had plenty of conversations with very senior colleagues around climbing the career ladder. A fair amount had started at Barclays and worked their way up, so clearly there are opportunities for you to progress, but obviously it comes with hard work given the scale and success of a organisation like Barclays.