What Barclays Seeks In MBA Hires

Could you give us an overview of your MBA recruiting and interview process? What are the steps that students should expect? How can they make a good impression and stay on your radar?

For most schools where we visit campus, we’ll do an event as early as September. This is an initial presentation allowing students to get to know the firm and the team. After that initial event, we usually hold smaller events on campus and in New York. We also host a lot of business schools and finance clubs in our office. We do informational interviews, allowing students to meet people in the groups they’re specifically interested in. Later in the season, we’ll host  dinners and other opportunities to network, culminating in first or final found interviews, which are held either on campus or in our office depending upon the school.

The best way to stay on our radar is to stay in touch with our people. I always recommend that students have at least two or three touchpoints with the firm. Also, that they not just meet these people and talk to them once but they nurture those relationships and keep them up over the course of the season.

We really try to strike a balance between the technical piece of the interview – making sure students have that ability to handle the technical work – and the behavioral part of the interview that, again, ties back to our values. We really want to make sure that our associates are going to be people who embody our values. The feedback we have on students over the entire fall – and the time we spent meeting with them – really feeds into the interview process as well. The interview is really the final step in a three month-long process. For that reason, we try not to have any trick questions or brain teasers, but for the interviews to be a conversation.

What types of onboarding, training and ongoing support do you provide to incoming MBAs?

Generally, our intern program mimics our full-time program in a lot of ways in terms of onboarding, training, and support. One thing that is unique to Barclays is that we have an onboarding team just for campus hires. We do that because our graduates are a really important client group for us. After associates join, we have an initial training program that lasts seven weeks and covers hard and soft skills. They learn their role as an associate. We bring them up to speed on the firm in general and they get a lot of technical training. We work with both internal employees and external vendors to make sure they are getting best-in-class training. After that, we have a team that does program management within HR. That team knows our class personally and helps them make decisions around where they’re going to rotate and ultimately helps them with their final placement, plus conducts their performance reviews. They will also help with mobility if that’s something you’re interested in after a couple of years.

We also have continuous learning and education opportunities once the MBAs  are here. We offer training opportunities both through our learning system internally and then there are specific programs for MBA graduates at various points, whether that is additional technical training or more soft skill or sales training. We find that there is a lot of enthusiasm for this training, especially when people can pick and choose what’s going to be best for them in terms of subject matter and timing

When it comes to Barclays, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that students may have about your organization (and your industry)?

The first misconception would be that Barclays is just like every other bank. We’re truly not. It’s definitely a unique place. And a true defining feature of Barclays is our culture of openness, support and inclusion.

Secondly, sometimes you hear now that investment banking isn’t a desirable career anymore. We still believe it is the best place to start and build a career. If you come here as a graduate, you’ll see the inner workings of the global economy and you’ll contribute to economic growth. We offer great training and allow you to develop a fantastic skill set, but it’s also a great place to stay and really build a long-term career.

Lastly, MBAs have a lot of interest in our entrepreneurial opportunities. Sometimes, banks have the reputation for not being very entrepreneurial. Barclays is definitely different in that way. We have a program in place called the Social Innovation Facility, where employees with great commercially viable ideas are given funding and support to bring them to life.  And we’ve had several MBA grads who’ve been a part of that.

While you will find an entrepreneurial spirit exists in a lot of groups, there are other specific opportunities where you can take an idea and bring it to life. A recent example of that is the Women in Leadership Index we launched, which was conceived internally and is something we’re quite proud of creating.