Summer Intern 2020 Review

It was a struggle at first since getting all the required access took around 2 weeks (our internships was reduced from 9 weeks to only 6 weeks). After almost every day I was experiencing connectivity issues and that wasn't pleasant at all. I would get disconnected from my meeting for multiple times. Despite that I would say the training they provided was very extensive (maybe a bit too much) but definitely useful. I think it would have been somewhat better if it was not virtual internship.

I would say that it's very important that you feel valued at the company you are working at. Barclays appreciate interns a lot since as they say it's a fresh set of eyes that can look at the problem differently than other employees. The only problem is that during a 6 week internship you can't do much of the important work and can't really tell whether the value you are bring to the company is important.

Everyone at Barclays is helpful and like I mentioned before they really appreciate interns. All the guidance/support was provided. Although it takes some times to communicate with some people working in different time zones but it is very rewarding since you receive a lot of feedback and they can even tell you about their career path and what would they do differently if any. Probably one of the downsides of summer internship is that some people that you intend to meet often go on holidays.

I am studying Maths, so skills I acquired will not be directly tied to what I am studying. I have been working with Excel and doing some problem solving task which might be related to Maths but definitely not directly. Although I started learning more programming concepts on my own using the access Barclays provided to Pluralsight. In any case I would say it was a rewarding experience that should help me in the future.

HR department prepared a lot of virtual training and sessions. It would have been useful but connectivity problems were not taken into the account. Often I would not be able to do my work because of sessions I have joined since the video would become choppy, so I would have to just quit it and continue working. It was very frustrating but I was told that experiencing connectivity issues is a part of Barclays experience.

The atmosphere was fairly alright bearing in mind that it is a virtual internship and it is almost impossible to make any intern related social events. There were some inter networking events but they were also followed by connectivity or access issues. I cannot evaluate the team atmosphere since our manager did not introduce us to any of the team members. We would just work with people we needed to complete our objectives but I guess it's part of virtual internship.

Barclays has provided every intern with access to the Pluralsight website. It's a fairly good website but in terms of coding practice (which I was hoping to do) there is only videos available, no practical excerises which I really wanted to do. Apart from that nothing else was provided in terms of personal development - just some compulsory financial training where one of the senior employees comes and tells us his career stories and what we should be focusing on.

I understand that it is an unprecedented situation going on everywhere but it was really hard to understand what full time role would look like when you're doing an internship only for 6 weeks (moreover a virtual one). One of the colleagues told me that full time role is much better than the internship and that he didn't learn anything at the time he was doing his summer internship at Barclays - just got some experience to put on CV.

Company culture is very much dependend on the location you work at. While doing a virtual internship I could not get a taste of what it feels like, also I wasn't even involved in day to day tasks so I did not interact much with my colleagues. Therefore, it's just impossible to give an honest opinion if I like such culture or not. In terms of meetings that I have had with different people working there, I would say it was okay.

I did not find this particularly useful since it was mostly work with Excel and I was expecting more problem solving, not some mundane work. I guess it would be hard to achieve it while keeping this in 6 week internship but I definitely expected more preparation from the HR team that was handling the internhip. I am still not sure what I want to do in the future, but I would not want to come back to the same team I worked there again.

The internhsip was paid adequately and I am not at liberty to discuss it in more detail.

There was one networking event where interns where placed in groups of 8 but it was not well organised. Due to the connectivity issues I could not use my webcam or hear other people sometimes. There were no other events apart from this one. But there were some sessions where you can meet employees and they would tell you about their career path which was fairly interesting but there were only a few of such events.

It was mostly Q&A sessions with other Barclays employees which I would not call as networking or social event opportunities. It was mostly focused on interns to get to know people from different roles across Barclays but since it was organised for all interns at the same time only a few would get an opportunity to ask any questions they might have. Again, I am not sure how could that be improved since everything was virtual.

No, not at all. I was barely seeing my manager (like once per week) and I did not know anyone from my team. I was only working with other intern and that was it. We did not learn what Barclays employees are doing outside of their working our, including my manager and team. I guess this is because of doing a virtual internship but I also think my team was not particularly interested in bulding any kind of relationship with their interns.

I would not recommend joining Barclays for a Virtual Internship. Working on site is much better (based on my previous experience) than doing a virtual internship. The most frustrating thing was connectivity issues and being locked out for almost a week. The IT support is not helpful at all and you have to ask your manager to fix your issues and deal with them. All in all I would say it was not worth it and I would not come back next year.