Technology analyst Review

The people in my team were all very welcoming and helpful, I felt like sometimes I didn’t quite have enough work to do, especially at the very start and end of my placement

When I worked with some members of my team, I felt like my work was really helpful, and was actually useful to Barclays

My manager was really helpful, and went out of my way to help me

I spent a lot of my day trying to find things to fill my time with

Some aspects of my work were self guided, so I had a lot of responsibility for them, some things howerever where just helping someone else, so I had very little responsibilities for them

I don’t think I’ve particularly learnt new skills, however I’ve learnt a lot through the experiences I’ve had here, especially how to interact with people in a workplace environment, and I’ve gained a lot of confidence setting up meetings and WebEx calls

The people were all friendly and kinda chatty, but a lot of time was spent working in silence, the rows and rows of identical desks don’t really lend themselves to a lively atmosphere (in my opinion). The grey/white walls don’t really help, even if they do have peeling quotes from people on them. (I’m downstairs in Babbage in the boring side (the fact that everyone calls it that really should tell you something))

Overall it was well organised, but it was let down by a small number of massive issues that really impacted my experience of the 9 weeks. The main was the lack of a laptop when I joined, I was expecting to be handed one in the first meeting when we all arrived on radbroke, but apparently it was our managers who had to request them for us, my request got lost in the system however, so I wasn’t allocated one and the tech people apparently didn’t have any spares to give me, someone on my team lent me there old one, but my account wasnt set up on it so I couldn’t log in. I spent a few days in the tech bar trying to get it to log in, but they eventually got it replaced with another one. The internet on this one didn’t work, so I had to raise a request for another one which of cause took a few days to go through. Finaly I got my third laptop near the end of my second week, so I could start working, except of cause that it didn’t have the software that I needed on (MS Project) despite raising multiple requests and calling the help desks, this wasn’t installed on my computer untill the 6th (yes 6th) week so I coouldnt even start that task untill then. For a tech company that is apparently “competing with google for talent” this seems rediculous, especially because I know a number of other interns who had very similar problems. The other organisational issue that seems small in comparison, is the fact that the majority of us haven’t been reimbursed for either our interview day, or our induction in London. It’s been Literally months since we all Paid for those tickets out of our own pockets, so it seems a bit cheep that we’ve not been sent the money (which must be like a five minuet task for someone) whenever anyone has emailed to enquiry about this there’s always been an “issue with the system, but it will be sent in a few days” but it never has, except for a few select people. Despite these issues the internship has been well organised by Daisy/Amy and everyone else in the recruiting team. The talks organised with people in the business where interesting and all the networking events ran smoothly. So it’s only a few select issues that brought it down.

We had the general training videos to work through, but not all of them were particularly relevant to the business areas I was working it

I’m not against working for Barclays, but I think I’d like to try out somewhere with a slightly different atmosphere first. That being said, I enjoyed the work I did here, and the pay is well above average so it’s a very tempting prospect. I also liked the canteen food, and the cheep Starbucks, which is a big plus

I think a lot of the interns met up outside of work, but I didn’t really join them, due to living at home, further away from where they all lived. I felt like this was more my choice then the fact that nothing was happening, so overall the social scene looked good

I live round here so accommodation wasn’t an issue, however everywhere is so hard to get to that you need to drive so going out for drinks is almost pointless, unless I want to spend £30 a time on a taxi. I’ve lived round here for a while though so that wasn’t really a surprise

I don’t think knutsford has a nightlife after the pubs close at 11

There was an intern rugby team, but I didn’t join