Spring Insight (Front Office) Review

I enjoyed this insight very much! I had the opportunity to explore the investment banking front office, network with many of the Barclays employees, discover from them what their jobscope was as well as find out more about Barclays firm culture. I also got to meet many peers from diverse backgrounds.

One issue was the catering provided as there were vegetarians amongst the cohort but on some days only one option was provided (i.e meat options or only salad) which I felt may not be filling enough? Another was for some activities it was difficult as the cohort size was slightly big but otherwise it was great!

Everyone was Barclays was extremely helpful, lovely and nice! Although a lot of us were new to the banking / finance industry and did not really know what to expect, there was great guidance and they were extremely receptive to our questions. We also got to try out case studies which was fun.

There was IDG which was team building. During this, we got to find out what kind of leader/learner we were as well as our personality traits, and working style as well as how to best work with others and develop our strengths. This is extremely useful in daily life! Other than that, the case studies were extremely insightfulz

I felt that the first day was too long, from 8am and ending only at 8pm with a 2.5hour networking at the end. Listening around for feedback (with my peers), the general consensus was that the cohort would have preferred if the networking was before the teambuilding / IDG activity.

Most of the cohort was quite excited during the case studies and panels and asked many questions, which I appreciated. There were many opportunities to mingle amongst us, and we have many people from diverse, interesting backgrounds. Overall, I had lots of fun meeting new people and I know a lot of others who did too.

I felt that Barclays did a really good job of introducing all the job functions considering they only had 4 days to do so. I do wish we could stay a little longer and work on more things, for example incorporating real values into our DCFs in the case studies, as well as the sales case study. I also wish that we could visit the investment banking offices like we did on the trading floor.

I feel that to understand the full role we would require technical knowledge but I actually have a much better understanding of this now than I did before. I am still a little bit confused about the exact jobscope but I do know more about the firm culture which is helpful.

The insight was really helpful as we had networking sessions, diversity panels, as well as general IB, markets, research panels for us to find out more about the different divisions and figure out which we liked best. I honestly think that Barclays has a really great culture and would recommend it.

I was really confused about the divisions and primary/secondary markets, as well as how investment banks split their market/sector coverage within the banks and coming to the spring insight really helped me gain a lot of knowledge in this. Although I still have a lot of work/studying to do on my own, I felt that it was really helpful.

I was paid but not reimbursed expenses as I live in London (and study in London). For those that do not live in London, Barclays pays for your accomodation and flight into London (if your travel time is less than 1h30m), otherwise it gets a little bit complicated (I’m not very sure about this, you’ll have to check with HR).

There were honestly so many opportunities to network with Barclays employees from different divisions - and of different levels as well, from analysts to MDs. We had a different range of opinions and also a good level of connection with them, from 1 to 1 to speaker level. My only complain would be not having enough time to network with more people!

There were honestly so many opportunities to network with Barclays employees from different divisions - and of different levels as well, from analysts to MDs. We had a different range of opinions and also a good level of connection with them, from 1 to 1 to speaker level. My only complain would be not having enough time to network with more people!

We had a panel where we found out more about what some employees got involved in outside of their daily work within the firm, such as WiN, Spectrum, Emerge etc. which was really interesting. I would have liked to know about the sports culture? Or if members of the firm engage in leisure together but did not have the chance to ask.

I absolutely 100% would recommend this insight to a friend. I learnt so much in this 4 days and really kudos to the different people (Barclays Campus Recruitment Team, and all the different members of Barclays) who came together to organise this for us. I am super grateful for the opportunity to come for this and am so glad that I did!