Emerging Technologist Intern Review

On the whole I enjoyed the work I was given thoroughly. It was varied and helped me to learn a huge amount. I was given enough Radbroke Hall is a really nice environment to work in and feels like a campus. However, I did struggled somewhat with social anxiety which I felt I could have done with some more support for, but it took me too long to find out how to ask for help with.

My colleagues were all very welcoming and helpful. They always took like to talk to me and to include me where they could. They were mostly quite a bit older than me, but we could still have some humor and talk. Everyone got on with their own work most of the time, but I liked that because I'm quite introverted myself.

My manager was very enthusiatic to have me as part of the team, and provided me with a lot of support. I was also assigned a buddy and mentor who I met with at the beginnning. In addition to this we were encouraged to arrange meetings with up to 4 directors who were all very willing to speak to me and I learned a lot from them.

Most of the time I had something to do, but I did feel that I finished things a lot more quickly than was expected. Some of the time I have nothing left to do and after asking for more work I was left waiting for a response. I sometimes felt like I needed to work more slowly so that I could spread the work out and didn't run out of things to do too quickly.

I didn't feel I was given very much responsibility during the placement. I was more there in a supporting role. I did provide some reccommendations which were passed upwards so potentially had some impact, but I don't know exactly what, if any, impact they did have on decisions being made.

The knowledge and skills I have learned will definitely help me in the future as I am interested in going into a similar environment in my career. I now know a lot more about how large organisations approach cyber security and how Barclays works as an organisation. It has also helped me refine and work out which areas I could and would be most interested in working in.

I found that it was a good balance of some friendly banter and conversations whilst getting coffee as well as periods where most people were focused on their work. This allowed me to socialise and feel like I got to know my colleagues whilst still being able to concentrate on my work.

It was well organised on the whole, but there were some issues especially at the beginning. The onboarding process was tricky as I had to go to get my documents verified, but the branch didn't actually send them when they said they did. The onboarding team took well over a month to tell me they hadn't received them so that I had to go back and do the whole process again during my exams. Our IT equipment wasn't ready for us when we arrived meaning that it took a week or so to actually be able to get up and running and started on anything.

Most of what I learnt was on the job as I was researching and talking to colleagues who were all extremely knowledgeable. They always had time to talk to me. We had two days induction in London, but aside from that I didn't have any kind of external training or experiences.

I would be very interested in working there in the future as the work is very interesting and the pay is good. It's exactly the kind of environment which I think would suit me as I liked the green spacen around the technology campus and the relaxed culture. There seems to be work which really would make use of my degree.

We had a whatsapp group and went out for drinks on numerous occasons over the course of the placement as well as cinema trips. It was a little tricky because we were all a bit spread out geographically though. Some people also went on day trips together, but I chose not to go on those.

The immediate area is quite expensive as its a small rural town, but as we were fairly close to a large city there were opportunities to choose cheaper options if necessary. However, coming from Sheffield where the cost of living is very low I found it has been more than I've become acustomed to.

The nightlife in the exact area is non-existent, although there is a pub situated very close to the site. In the small town a few miles away there were some good bars and restuarants. To go out properly it was good that we were relatively close to a large city to go to instead.

My team was supposed to go out for a social meal, but we never ended up doing that. I know other interns got to go out and do charity work or visit the startup labs, but I didn't get that opportunity unfortunately. I would have liked to have done a little more outside of work.