Application Support Analyst Review

For the first half of my internship, I felt very unproductive and out of place, mainly because I don't feel I received the necessary training and the introductions I should have gotten before starting my internship. By training, I mean for my actual role rather than training in general to understand the company policy and culture. But after my fourth week, things started getting better and I started understanding how the system works across my team, and I started taking on tasks myself and completing them.

My line manager has always been extremely friendly, understanding and supportive. He always made sure I was comfortable, I had something to work on, I was enjoying the work I'm doing and was always readily available to ask questions. Honestly, I felt he gave me more attention than he did to the rest of the team, and many of the team members were also the same. However, the people who weren't part of my team (many of which sat around me or even adjacent to me) did not initiate in conversation if I didn't, and sometimes the only words exchanged between us would be "Good morning". It's not that they weren't friendly either, they were among each other, but they weren't with me since I was not in the same team as them.

This is the one thing I would definitely express my approval with: my line manager, my recruiter and even some of the company's top directors I spoke with were always open to meeting up, always happy to listen to my ideas, and always did their best to give me the support I needed.

If the internship had been a bit longer, I may have given this a higher rating, but the truth is for the first two weeks I had practically two hours of proper work a day. It was very boring and very quiet, and I felt like my skills weren't being utilized. I then came across an application used by the department that no one knows how to configure, so I found the manuals and took charge of that application. I am now the only person on that team that knows how to use it, and the team knows this so they send over any related tasks to me. But if I hadn't taken the initiative myself, I doubt things would have been different. Also, my line manager gave me the green light to build or develop any solutions I thought were useful (which I did, and that's how I kept myself busy), so he was very flexible in terms of what I should be doing, unless there was a priority task that I had to complete. It's not that I expect them to give me work to do, but I expected some guidance as to the type of work I should be doing. Most of the work I've done, I decided to take on myself.

I was given tasks by my line manager that were at a high priority to the business, but I also took charge of an application that no one knew how to manage (as well as developed a tool to help the business). At the same time, my line manager gave me the same level of access that he had to all the platforms I needed (some of the full-time team members didn't have as much access as I did). I would say I was given a lot of responsibility.

At first, I was rather upset with the fact that almost none of the things I learned in uni were being used in my internship, but then I sat with a director who was once in the same position as me. He was a summer intern from a developer/computer science background, who received an offer to work in a managerial role and took the opportunity. He worked in aerospace engineering and is now has a major role in the company, and it's rather interesting how his background is very different from his current role. Point is, in terms of my degree, I didn't learn much in relation to computing, but I certainly gained a lot of real-world experience, and I think this internship is brilliant for someone who's never worked in a large corporation before.

When my line manager was around, he'd involve me in conversations and discussions but he was away for two weeks, in which I felt like no one really cared I was there. No one spoke to me when I was around, it was just me saying "Good morning" to the guys around me, and that was it for most of the day unless I asked a question.

I think it was set up well. The training was crucial and essential, and the events we had we were invited to were always either interactive, informative, or just awesome to be at.

They ran sessions that taught us some new ways of thinking and different development methodologies for us to use when we leave Barclays and adopt in our own work, which was really cool. In terms of actual training, I feel I could have been trained more for my role.

Very. I feel like my team really wants me to stay, and they're very happy with having me on the team. Note that most of my team is not based in the same building (let alone the same city) as I am.

Yes, there were many events that allowed me to meet and interact with a lot of people in my internship. I made a lot of friends and connections.

n/a, I commuted from my own place.

Didn't really engage in nightlife activities.

Groups of interns tended to organise events for us to attend, and there were a couple organised by the company for us.