Finance Intern Review

Overall I have really enjoyed my Barclays internship and learnt an incredible amount of things. Whether that knowledge be technical or whether it be advice that I will take through my entire career. I liked the work as well as the general mood in the office. Many intern networking events were arranged which were fun.

I felt very valued by my colleagues. My team always had time for my questions and I was given meaningful work. They respected me as a collegue and made me feel like a valuable member of the team. Any director that I met also respected me and they were all very kind. I was impressed that they made time for interns.

A lot of support and guidance came from the review meetings that we had with our line manager. We had 2 review meetings in total. One after 5 weeks and one after 8 weeks. These were very informative as my manager provided me with great feedback and advice. I also received support and guidance daily from my team whenever I required it.

I would say that I was busy enough to not be bored however I still had spare capacity. This I know though was unique for my team because there was only 3 of them and 2 interns so the work was split between us. I communicated this to my manager during my mid term review and so I was busier in the second half of my internship.

I was satisfied with the amount of responsibility that I was given. Some of the tasks given to me I had full responsibility whilst others I completed whilst continuaously checking with my team that I was doing the correct thing. This is natural though as I was only there for 9 weeks and so there was only so much responsibility that I could have been given.

During my internship I developed an amazing amount of personal and office related skills. My computer skills have developed a lot and I have gained a huge amount of knowledge about the different departments within finance at Barclays. I was allowed to meet directors and managing directors and the advice I received is incredibly valuable. I will take this advice thrughout my career.

The atmospere in the office was pleasant. It was very relaxed and everyone was kind. It is business dress monday to thursday and then casual friday on fridays. However if you are not in meetings then it can be on the casual side of business al week. It does depend on which offices you are in though.

I was very impresed with how organised the internship was. There were many events and learning sessions arranged for us. The events were enjoyable and a fantastic chance to network. The learning sessions were incredible insightful and I gained a lot from attending them.

As mentioned previously, we had finance learning sessions. These were sessions helf with directors of different sections of finance. In these sessions the directors told us what their department did and also their career stories and any advice. We also had online compliance training which is esssential for all colleagues.

The internship scheme feeds into the graduate scheme. I am hoping to receive an offer from them and I will find this out on the last day.

Most of the finance interns went for drinks on a friday night. Naturally some interns were more sociable than others but overall the turnout for social gatherings was geerally good.

The internship was in London so the cost of living and socialising was high. Barclays do recognise this though and so pay well to ensure you can live more than comfortably.

London has fantastic night life however it is rather expensive.

Barclays have many sports clubs which were available for interns to join.