Analyst, Barclays Investment Solutions Review

I really enjoyed the internship. The team I was allocated to was brilliant and good in how they gave me work. More senior workers were very happy to meet me and discuss our futures, and HR organised some great events. It has been a great motivator for coming back for a grad role, as this has been a great place to work.

I felt very valued. They are happy to give you advise and there are colleagues on the grad scheme if you want to ask a question you'd prefer your line manager not to hear. The values of the company prevent any hard feelings towards interns really well, it makes it an enjoyable place to be.

I have been guided quite well by my manager but they tend to be very busy so other colleagues in the team or workers on the grad scheme provided me with the majority of the guidance and advise I received, but that is likely due to the line manager knowing how busy he is so allocating this onto the grad in the team.

In these things you decide how busy you want to be, unless your line manager gives you a load of work (very unlikely). Once you've done what they've given you, there's so many people you can ask for reading or ask for a meeting with someone, so you should always be able to give yourself work.

By the nature of a lot of the roles in Barclays, you need training and experience to be able to fully contribute and run the show for yourself, so it's no surprise you do the more menial jobs, but these are great for getting an insight into what your team is doing.

This varies between the teams your in, but for me it was hugely useful, and you get the confidence to use it in studies and beyond. On top of this, you develop a great amount of soft skills, how to communicate, you need to be organised, as well as getting a sense of real life office atmosphere.

Relaxed but very productive. You hear a lot of business, formal conversations but also a lot of friendly conversations. You don't feel intimidated as an intern, as you get right into the mix when you are on the desk, it's not like you are all in a different location to your team. On top of this, the fitting of the office is very modern and impressive.

Really well. HR do a great job in getting quite highly placed, senior leaders to talk to us and it's a great way of getting an insight into those members of staff. As well as this, line managers have work for you, or they can set up someone to give you work to do, so you get great exposure over the 9 weeks.

HR put on workshops in coding and entrepreneurship throughout the 9 weeks, so you develop skills there as well. When you're at the desk, because everyone is so happy for you to be there, you quickly develop the soft skills that massively improve your experience and are very important in the real working world.

The future employment prospects are very appealing, there's a great graduate scheme that runs for 2 and a half years and gives you an opportunity to rotate around 4 different areas of the company. This gives you great exposure to different areas, enabling you to truly work out where you're going to enjoy a career most.

There's a great social scene. In the first two or three days, you meet other interns and meet graduates above you, so you get to know people well enough that then after work or at lunch you can chat to other interns about how you're getting on, which is really useful in getting the most out of your time on the internship.

London is never cheap so it's not going to be cheap wherever you end up, but you can certainly manage to avoid huge costly prices if you're smart about it. Speaking to grads or other people that've gone through the internship helps to know where the best places are so you can avoid huge expenses.

I worked in Canary Wharf, where there's plenty of bars and a park in the middle of it where everyone working around all the offices comes out after work later in the week, which is a really nice way to enjoy your time after a days work. Also, you can meet and chat to other interns here.

Yes, at Barclays there are plenty of societies in all sorts of sports that anyone can sign up to. This is a great way to meet other people, potentially network, and meet forget about the work for a little while. There are no barriers to interns in these societies.