Risk Intern Review

I believe my internship was an exciting experience. It definitely exceeded my expectations: I received a clear set of objectives to work on over the course of my internship, I received ongoing support from my manager and most importantly I was treated as part of the team. The following example should provide enough insight to proove my point: As part of my objectives I worked on driving forward the digital agenda within Risk. Therefore, I came up with the idea of running a Digital Day Event. I liaised with over 35 senior people and managed to run the event extraordinarily, engaging over 200 people. The process of organising and running the event have been entirely my responsibility. This has been only one of my main activies!

I had the opportunity to work in the Chief of Staff team. From the moment I arrived everyone around me has been very friendly and supportive. My ideas have always been welcomed and in many instances applied to real cases.

My line manager has been very supportive throughtout the whole internship. He gave me the freedom to create my own work ethos, while carefully guiding my steps when necessary. We had a weekly one to one meeting on Monday when we usually started the conversation talking about our weekend and then moved to work progress, help and guidance.

It is up to you how busy you want to be. I delivered everything before the deadlines and I worked on the quality of my work, often asking for feedback before submitting the actual work. Therefore, I didn't notice when the day was going by as I was very busy.

I was responsible for running a whole event internally. I believe I was given 100% responsibility over my tasks and objectives.

The skills I developed and the training I received will help me throughout my continuous development. Throughout the many things I learned, I believe I mostly developed my leadership skills.

The office was progress driven and focused on the actual work, rather than 'Fun Never Stopped'. Please note that this is not a bad thing. For me, that meant that I could concentrate and work in a very professional environment. We had times when we discussed things outside work and laughed, but overall the atmosphere was serious and professional, and this is the way it should be in the banking industry.

The internship was very well organised. We had 2 induction days at the beginning, where we had different speakers from senior management in Barclays talking about their career paths and training. Throughout the internship we had meetings organised with different senior leaders, networking events and exciting challenges (for example: citizenship challenge). I cannot see how it could have been organised better.

I would say all of us received quite a lot of training. Starting from day 1 we had a full day of training on financial instruments. Throughout the internship I received extensive personal training from my manager and I believe Barclays invested a lot in our development.

Barclays has an impressive range of offers and has always been appealing for me.

It is quite expensive to live and socialise in London.

London is one of the cities that never sleeps. However, I enjoy other activities more than clubbing.

There were many opportunities, but time is a crucial constraint.