UK Retail Bank Summer Intern Review

I really enjoyed my summer with Barclays, it was a great opppurtunity to understand what goes on within the company as well as to meet a great group of interns!

Within my branch placement colleagues wanted to get to know me and very much welcomed me to the team, I was always been asked my opinion about things so felt very much valued

From the outset of the internship personal objectives were agreed in the form of a personal development plan, I had a weekly one to one meeting my my immediate line manager to review progress as well as raising other issues, managers were also happy to provide support on an ad-hoc basis as and when required and no issue or question was too ever too small! I also had regular conference calls with my area director and HR

A plan was in place suggesting the activites that you should have been undertaking on a daily basis, however this was really flexible and to some extent how busy you were was up to you and how much you wanted to get out of the internship, I found that I was always busy and had something to do

I felt that I was given lots of responsibility, examples include leading team meetings, training sessions and one to one feedback sessions with other members of staff, some activites were restricted due to the time which would have been required for training etc. in order to undertake such activites

Regular development workshops were held throughout the internship, the main focus areas were around presentation, leadership and communication skills all which were of great benefit and will help for the future

A really positive atmosphere, within both branch and head office everybody was friendly and welcoming and I particulary liked the open plan style of working within head office

Good organisation, an 8 week overview was provided suggesting the kinds of things which should be done on a day to day basis, regular email and phone contact also took place with HR and weekly events were scheduled for all interns.

Regular development sessions including a leadership day which assessed personal characteristics and concluded with an intern challenge - I'm happy to say that I was part of the winning team! A presentation skills workshop was also incredibly usefull, this was run by a consultancy company who work with senior executives

Barclays have relaunched there graduate scheme which is really appealing, hopefully I have demonstrated the right characteristics throughout the internship to secure a place on it!!

Some social events were organised by the graduate team, but we also arranged something weekly amongst ourselves

London is rather expensive!!!

London!!!

We met up regulary outside of work either through things that we organised ourselves or those arranged by the graduate team