Summer Intern Review

My line manager really went out of her way to make sure that this would be a valuable and rewarding experience for me, and her efforts were reflected through the variety of tasks that she and her colleagues had me complete: I was exposed to numerous functions within my team and learned a lot.

My colleagues were friendly and inclusive; they invited me to team events with them throughout the summer, and showed a genuine interest in me as a person. I was pleasantly surprised at how many people took the time to chat with me and how freely people gave advice and/or offered help.

My line manager was not a micromanager and left me to figure problems out on my own after being assigned a task, but she also made it very clear that she was available for support and advice if I needed it. I liked this balance struck between flexibility and support, and worked well under this arrangement.

There were only a couple of moments when I was bored due to a pause in my workflow, and the rest of the time was pretty busy, yet not overwhelmingly so.

I was definitely given more responsibility than I expected; one of the slide decks I made (with extensive data and calculations) were vetted minimally and directly used for an internal meeting - this made me realize how much trust my colleagues placed in me in shouldering the responsibility of delivering my findings and discussing my personal insights.

Skills garnered from the internship will definitely help in any finance-related role in the future, and can also be broadly applicable to other jobs within the corporate sector.

Great rapport and banter in general - it can get pretty loud during the day but I enjoyed this as it always kept my energy levels high and made the day go by faster.

HR was pretty organized in general: for the most part there was also good communication between HR and the interns so that any change of plans or unexpected delays were manageable. In general it went pretty smoothly.

We had a whole week of training as well as sporadic trainings throughout the internship. HR also arranged for the interns to meet quite a few members of senior management. I can tell that Barclays is serious about investing in its people, even those in the most junior levels.

The analyst job offered to some interns is a 2-2.5 year contract with 3 rotations - I see this as an excellent opportunity to learn as much as possible within a short period of time before rolling off the graduate scheme into a permanent role in the bank.

Some interns regularly got together; the social scene is definitely there if you seek it out.

London is expensive; the stipend the interns received covered housing and food and some entertainment comfortably, but didn't leave a lot of room for much else.

Mostly just a few bars in Canary Wharf - most interns don't seek out nightlife until the weekend when we meet outside of Canary Wharf.