I had an interview with Barclays Capital aka ( Barcap).
The application process is fairly straightforward. Initial application --> automatic invite for numerical & verbal tests. Then phone interview and the final full day assessment centre whereby offers will be Made.
Last year I applied but I failed the initial numerical test, I was not happy as this was the first application I attempted. I spent hours making sure all my competency questions were "on point" etc BUT I failed the numerical test unfortunately ( they put some next level questions in which I have never seen in any future shl tests - I felt cheated but thats life I suppose, live and you learn).
This year I made a dummy application to make sure there were no trick questions and to ensure that I was
fully prepared for the Barcap Numerical Test, I passed the dummy application so I applied mid October with the competency questions saved from last year in this application ( mainly just to see how good it actually was) & of course for the experience of doing a summer internship.
Luckily for me three days after I did the tests I got an invite to a phone interview. I booked it to take place on my birthday since this day was most convenient in terms of lectures and workload.
I prepared for the interview by doing mock tests and having the answered prepared and written down to the standard competencies using the STAR technique.
I was quite nervous in the 5 minutes before the interview was scheduled to begin as this was my first phone interview.
The interviewer emphasised the fact this is a strength based interview and they are not able to interpret the questions for me.
The questions asked were as follows :
The questions that I can remember are:
1. You organise an event and more people than expected turn up what do you do?
2. What motivates you?
3. How do you motivate others?
4. If you were in a good performing team but thought something could be done better what would you do?
5. Do you like proof reading and paying attention to detail?
6. How to you build friendships or rapport with people?
The phone interview was pretty tough going and I felt like I was stuttering / stammering & basically had no chance due to how obscure the questions were. Luckily there was no technical questions which I suspect was due to it being conducted by the HR of the bank.
Exactly a month after the phone interview after I had forgotten about this torturous experience, I received an email saying I was invited to the assessment centre ( AC). Which would compromise of a trading game and strength based interviews.
At the AC, there were 32 candidates and 21 desks recruiting as barcap internships are non rotational. We were given timetables and people had between 3 - 7 interviews with the chance to network more interviews which I was able to do surprisingly easy.
The trading game was like poker but cards of 1-15 where we traded in teams against everyone giving prices and being assessed. I suspect the game was there to measure primarily how people work in a team and more secondary if there were any trading wizkids amongst us.
After this I was told one of my interviews was cancelled so although I had 5 interviews scheduled it was only 4 interviews left.
My first interview was almost identical to the phone interview I had as the interviewer read all of the questions from the HR book, this put me into a false sense of security as I thought all interviews would be like this, but I was wrong,
I now waited 2-3 hours for my next interview. At lunch time I sat next to some traders who invited me for an interview since most candidates sat with each other and I happen to sit beside the traders, looks like I got lucky interview invite over lunch time.
This interview was chaotic as one of the interviewer was getting phone calls & I was getting grilled for every little thing on my cv whilst another was walking inside and out of the room.
The interview ended early as I had another scheduled interview to go to, this one was an even worse grilling followed by brain teasers which were quite difficult and I messed up on.
Actual Brain Teaser Questions
Calculate the equivalent interest rate of the following :
Hsbc
have an offer whereby they will give you £1,000 up front if you give
them £11,000 and after one year you can withdraw your original deposit.
Another brain teaser:
The interviewer asked what is the probability that he could guess my phone number given he couldn't just look at my cv.
Another teaser was just to express the reciprocal of 2x2x2x2x2 as a decimal.
Back to the lunch time interview they gave me more questions about options and other stuff, they pretty much were teaching me the parity of options.
Then finally another interview was cancelled lol! By now I was exhausted I had another interview where the guy started to trade with me and asked me to give him prices, I was good yet bad.
Still I learned a lot , most importantly don't go to an interview if your ill! Especially these intense ones.
