Barclays sell the job to you as amazing, that they care so much about their employees and that it is a very stress free environment/culture. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
I lasted a year in this company, and it was the worst year of my life, making me contemplate suicide every morning before I started work. It was that bad.
It was a telephony based role. Training was woeful, rather than training you about the ins and outs of the company, how to use their systems and how to deal with different queries and complaints, they instead spend weeks drilling nonsense and what should be common sense to most people into your head. There was bare minimum training on how to do the job itself, and what they don’t tell you is that you need to know pretty much everything because managers are useless and other colleagues are unwilling to help and often times refused to take over the customer from you. Training is so bad that one member of staff will do/say one thing, and another member will believe something completely different to be the correct way. The truth is, absolutely nobody knows what they are talking about.
Nice customers are few and far between, and I don’t blame the customers because Barclays as a bank are shocking and unwilling to help. There was many times I could have done something to help but my manager simply refused that I take my own initiative which really is what companies should be looking for. Be prepared to be screamed at multiple times a day for somethi
ProsSalary and benefits
ConsTraining, managers, customers, day to day life
A good job but hampered by croney-ism being more important for advancement than capability
My job itself has never given me cause to be unhappy in itself, it has been extremely rewarding, however the office on the whole hampers itself by advancing the wrong people to the wrong positions.
I have never looked beyond my own current role for advancement as I feel my strengths are best used where I am and I do not feel my skills would be best utilised at higher levels.
We are looked after by the company, renumeration is a hot topic in any company, being in a company where you are paid below the national average for your particular role means it is no different here, but we are treated to special events, such as a staff barbecue, once a year, where we are allowed extra time outside our structured breaks to enjoy catering outside which is arranged and paid for by the company. The company also offers a sharesave system which is extremely generous.
One of the reasons I have enjoyed this role for so long is that I have tremendous respect for the people I work with on a peer level, the job is engaging and mentally stimulating, however its work-life balance is virtually non-existant, we operate 7 days a week and the only day our department closes is Christmas Day, we operate from 8am until 10pm and teams are split on a varying rota to cover the various shifts, currently we can only see 4 weeks ahead making it difficult to make family arrangements, middle managment and some team leaders do not have to make the same commitment to a similar pattern, there is also no shif
ProsFree Coffee on Mondays, desk massages once a month, special events
Conscomparatively low pay for role, lack of recognition for efforts, very poor work-life balance, a "butt-kiss" led environment, lack of opportunities for advancement, lack of accountability at higher levels for failure
2.0
Customer Mortgage Expert | Liverpool | 13 Mar 2021
Stressful place to work with little to no recognition
I worked at the call centre in Liverpool in the mortgage department as an agent. My primary role is to service existing mortgages for customers as well as help customers who are interested in applying for a mortgage with Barclays. The job itself is actually quite interesting as you talk to a wide variety of people from all walks of life however you are expected to keep up to date with an incredible amount of information. As mortgages are so highly regulated, staff have it drummed into them that if you were to give incorrect information to a customer by accident, there would be severe repercussions so there's a lot of pressure straight away. The training received, in my experience, was okay however because it was done over the December period, the existing staff were mainly on their holidays so getting experience on the phone lines was near impossible so you get thrown in at the deep end.
The goal posts are constantly moved by management. Stats on your calls are constantly looked at - so how long you're on the phone, putting people on hold etc. They have unrealistic expectations as to how to handle calls which is held to different standards by different managers. Call centres based in other countries have closed down so our call traffic is through the roof but extra training is never given.
Some staff, including myself, have been sent to work from home over the pandemic without being given the necessary equipment to make the job easier. I've only had a laptop and the heads
ProsFriendly staff, good canteen, sick pay
ConsLong hours, stressful, bad management, unrealistic expectations set, lack of support
Change Coordinator – Barclays Bank PLC
Oct 2012 - Present
• Maintaining records management, working and coordinating with Stakeholders ensuring that they are updated with meetings, taking minutes, booking appointments, performing daily MI reports, having the ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Collecting data analysis and ensuring that all records are maintained and looked in to effectively in order to ensure that the business has the relevant information that is required.
• Obtaining information from all parts of the business in order to plan for the future with statistics recorded.
• Completing complex admin tasks which involve various advanced excel skills such as – running reports against spreadsheets and locating missing information via reports and managing this data specifically and analysing key changes within the trends set. Implement procedures and processes maintain and distribute accordingly. Deal with any problematic solutions within a timely manner and remain focused.
• Whilst considering financial changes to implement, I will always ensure that I am focusing on improvement to prevent AML and legal structures which may impact the operation.
• One of my recent projects involved coordinating a 200-page operational instruction proposal: I proofed and edited the narratives provided by the division head, formatted spreadsheets, and generally made sure
1.0
Customer Service Representative | Churchill | 16 Sept 2015
Horrible place to work
The people at Barclays are unimaginative, corrupt and at times pathological. People who are not in the 'click' are often victimised.
They preach values such as Respect, Integrity, Service and Excellence yet the Management have double standards. They impose rules on others to be-little them, quoting them as bank policy when this is not the case. They hinder your development, block your ideas, or steal your idea after you've put all of the work into it. if you think outside the box and try to 'live the values' that Barclays themselves impose, the management will make your life difficult. If you want to make a positive difference to the lives of customers and improve your working environment, again, you will be isolated and antagonised into a reaction that may cost you your job.
Their Personal Development system is completely self and momentary orientated. Incentives to help others are based purely on how much money it will earn you, or how far up it will get you in the bonus hierarchy. They have an 'Added Value' system of which helping and training other colleagues is not considered as adding value to your role.
Their recruitment process is also questionable. Firstly you have to complete three psychometric tests; numerical, problem solving and 15 questions relating to their values. If you bench mark on this and are in the top bracket you will be selected for interview. When you are interviewed they will ask you up-to 8 competency questions and then a further 4 compete
ProsCompany pension, flexi-hours, private medical, good sick pay scheme, death in service, other benefits
Been here in Mortgages for nearly 7 years.
There's a highly Machiavellian culture amongst the management that's just so exhausting to be around. The daily micro-managing is so demoralising & suffocating, especially when your TL/manager doesn't even know how do to your job. If you dare speak up or criticise anything then your "values" will be questioned and you'll get written up... so you're basically given a thiny-veiled threat to keep silent.
The stats & targets are so unrealistic for the role. You're expected to do literally everything on the call without any hold. That approach may work in easier roles that have simpler queries that are quicker to resolve but it doesn't work well in a Mortgage environment.
Not only that but they constantly move the goalposts. That means you could be doing everything right but end up in trouble without even realising it. They do this because they're technically not allowed to target staff so they get around it by calling them "expectations" but without telling you what these "expectations" are! Then when you don't meet their "expectations" you're put on a Performance Improvement Plan. It's crazy! You also get timed when you go to the loo... apparently the maximum Comfort Break you're allowed is about 3-4 minutes per day (that includes getting a drink & whatever you need to do in the toilet).
As for the systems they make us use... Dire! Half of the time I ger error messages so can't process anything in order to do my job properly (which
ProsNone
ConsManagement
3.0
Customer Service Representative | Liverpool | 11 Mar 2020
Okay place to work providing you have no Mental Health Issues
Worked here from April 2019- November 2019.
They say that they endorse mental health and have a few modules on the topic, but treat it as a one size fits all.
They say they can accommodate any appointments or any health issues but very rarely back it up. A few decent management and training staff there to be fair but other team leaders and managers wouldn't feel comfortable speaking to never mind asking them for help.
Don't want you to pass customers through to different departments which I understand a bit however when you need to ask someone for help they ask you all sorts of questions and basically tell you its this way or complaints line, which just stresses you out more and probably stresses the customer out more and that's providing you find a team leader that hasn't just gone on a walk somewhere or off on their lunch
The pay is decent, but I guess it just depends on what your previous jobs were really. The site itself is great and most of the staff are friendly and welcoming but the training that you do at the start is a bit pointless.
As I said I was struggling with anxiety and depression at the time and was making a few mistakes because of these and didn't really feel that was taken into consideration when a few mistakes were made. Resulted in my dismissal after they kept moving back my meeting dates which in turn led to further work mistakes due to possibility of dismissal hanging over me.
Certain team leaders do what they want and bring unqual
3.0
Customer Service Representative | Poole | 14 Nov 2018
PPI Department
You are expected to be in ten or so minutes before you start your shift to log in and open your systems. You should know what you are doing that day, unless something has changed recently (this happens a lot), and you should immediately open your case queue and begin working through customer claims. You need to start with the oldest cases and work from there. Written guidance is available but it is not very easy to use or written in an easy to understand way. Your team will have a Subject Matter Expert who doubles as your Deputy Team Leader. The Deputy Team Leader will often be the most hands-on with the team, whilst the Team Leader serves as more of a middleman between higher management and yourselves. It depends on the approach of each individual TL and team.
The systems tend to be slow at the best of times and often a whole system will have a bug or not be working at all. You will regularly use more than seven applications at once on a case and you have one, albeit largish, screen to use.
The general philosophy is to do what is best for the customer but sometimes decisions are made in which "the risk has been accepted" and you may feel pressured to put productivity over the quality of your work. Your case work is checked regularly by Quality Control agents and you are given support to improve your work. You may be put on an improvement plan if your work falls below a certain level and you may lose out on bonuses.
The permanent benefits are good but I would say the salar
Prossmart-casual dress code, relaxed office environment, great colleagues
Respect
I respect and value those i work with. An example of this is when a member of QA has marked my case for a BAU check I thought that they had made an error in the marking of my case which they have failed me on. I approached a member of the QA team in order to receive some feedback. After discussing the matter at length our opinion differed on the subject but i respectfully took on board what they had to say and carried this advice out on later tasks. Resulting in me not failing on the same issue within future cases.
Integrity
At the beginning of my role at Barclays, the perception the team leaders had of me wasn’t the best. Since I have moved teams I have made a conscious effort to improve how I am perceived and aligning myself to the core values. I am on time at work while coming of my breaks. I have done this by making sure time is very important and coming back of beaks on time. I also was taking extra time talking to people while on break and now I stay in my time limit. My team leader has seen dramatic improvement in this and is very proud of me.
Service
On some occasions when there is a large backlog of cases that have gone out of SLA. These cases needed to be worked within the next few days to be within the FOS timelines. I stayed behind to help clear this back log and also volunteered to work overtime at the weekend. This helped clear the cases that were going out of SLA.
Excellence
I help and advice my team and other
Barclays, 1 Churchill Place (1CP).
In general, a positive and encouraging place to work. There is a big focus on life-work balance and wellbeing. The floors are getting refurbished one by one and the newer floors are definitely bright, airy and pleasant. There is a deliberate shortage of desks as they have introduced flexi-desks but most departments are still somewhat possessive of 'their' flexi-desks until around 10am. Having said that, there are always desks available after a short search. The meeting rooms are well kitted-out. The IT systems are not always sensible or easy to access and IT support is highly variable in my experience as a relatively recent new joiner.
The subsidised canteen is respectably decent although rammed from 12:30 to 1:30. A good hot meal for under £6 is reasonable for the area and they do have a good variety of vegetarian and vegan options as well as meaty ones.
There are plenty of breakout areas and cafes scattered around the building Unfortunately, not all floors offer free tea/coffee or milk so I bring my own from home.
The Canary Wharf building is so vast and disjointed that it is difficult to make personal connections. I find many of the senior management are not easily accessible and there is a culture of not allowing enough time for meaningful conversations or meetings - as if they orthodoxically believe time is money so they don't let you have any. It's true that they have many projects and many people are genuinely busy - b
Prosrefurbished floors are nice and subsidised canteen is decent
Constoo many make-work minded people (I'm too busy to talk) and lack of access to senior leadership
Anti Money Laundering
• Formulate & develop company policies as per the guidelines imposed by Reserve Bank of India.
• Update regulatory program inventory with relevant laws and regulation.
• Review & Update on a daily basis to locate new regulatory announcements or changes that impact bank operations.
• Conduct regular and targeted transaction monitoring to identify large purchase transaction patterns and trends associated with exceeding the Maximum dollar value allowed per sales transaction originating through sale of Traveler Cheque.
• Analyze and report to regional team with cash payments made to card accounts above market limit.
• Analyze and report to Financial Intelligence Unit with cash transaction report greater than prescribed threshold.
• Analyze & Report to regional team with credit balance in the card account.
• Review transactions & quarterly Reconciliation of Identified High Risk accounts highlighted though PEP & OFAC Sanctions match.
• Research, Investigate & Update Suspicious Activity Report through the above mentioned points and internal employee source for MCO to be reported to Country Executive Team and regulators.
• Monitoring of New Applications solicited through the sales force for adherence to AML program/Know Your Customer documents to identify gaps within departments & work in coordination with the business units to ensure control mitigation.
• Coordinate with global AML group to perform sanction screening on Bridger LexisNexis plat
It was a cheerfull and a charming team with a good infrastructure.
>A Typical day at work - Enter the office grab a cup of tea and have word with my manager on daily things to do list.
>Call the recruitment agency go through the recruitment tracker and advice the agency representative on what needs to be completed.
> Start fishing for new candidates from Dubizzle or Bayt shortlist the CV's and mail them to the business line managers for selection.
> Contact the potential candidates arrange for interview's.
> Conduct HR interview and send out the recruitment packs to recruitment agency for visa process.
> Initiate a contact with candidates ex- employers in order to obtain references through mail or phone call.
> request for the recruitment tracker from the agency go through the same by candidate to confirm the Labour approvals and date of joining of the new candidates.
> Prepare a recruitment report business wise with the latest update and send out to all business Line Managers.
> Go through the account opening tracker and follow-up on the pending forms.
> Check on the pending invoices and process the same with relevant approvals.
> Conduct a quality check on the candidate personal files (hard copies) and dispatch the same back to the agency.
> Keep checking the e-mails and reply them on time.
> Request for attendance from the business line mangers and update same in the attendance tracker.
> Conduct exit interview if any and send out the feedback to relevant
line manager.
> Calculate End of service benefit for resigned e
ProsOver time was an additional income in Barclays
• Worked as a business analyst to build Strategy Web application for financial statements and inspections
• Identified, researched, investigated, analyzed, defined and documented business processes.
• Designed and developed, Use Cases, Activity Diagrams, Entity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, Visio and Business Process Modeling.
• Conducted user interviews, gathered requirements, and analyzed the requirements by using Rational Rose, Visio and Requisite pro – RUP.
• Involved in creating business processes and modeling diagrams using Rational Unified Process (RUP).
• Working with clients to better understand their needs and present solutions using structured SDLC approach.
• Exposed to Agile methodology.
• Performed Unit Testing and User Acceptance Testing and documented detailed defects.
• Worked extensively with Risk Management, Mortgage Loan Servicing, and Commercial and Residential mortgage, CMBS, MBS.
• Mortgage Pre-payment risk, Risk Analytics for MBS, Loan Servicing, Loan Origination, MBS, CMBS, and Secondary Mortgage Market.
• Identified gaps and performed gap analysis with respect to CMS requirements.
• Escrow and Reserve Administration, Escrow processing, Escrow Analysis, Non-Escrow Loans Collateral Inspection and Monitoring, Property Inspection, Income and Expense Statement Review, Inspection Report.
• Performed Data mapping, logical data modeling, created class diagrams and ER diagrams and used SQL queries to filter data.
• Reports were displayed and deriv
2.0
Customer Service Representative | Liverpool, NY | 19 Nov 2020
Great job for the people in the managers 'it' circle.
People get rewarded and promoted for their personal relationships rather than their capabilities.
I worked for around 3 years at the Barclays Contact Center in Liverpool. When I was first hired I thought it was great! 3/4 weeks paid class room training to ensure you had sufficient knowledge to successfully do your new role. A company that really seemed to care about their employee's and their future career within the company.
After a while it becomes apparent that regardless of how knowledgeable you are in your role favouritism is always given to those who have personal relationships with management. For example although it is supposed to be against policy there are multiple on going relationships that cause unwarranted drama in a working environment, multiple managers are dating each other, managers being in the same department as their partners, there have even been instances of people having affairs! It is honestly a very toxic environment for those who just want to do their job and progress due to merit and hard work.
The pay and benefits is pretty good for what the concept of the role is outlined to be. However with consistently changing business models and services level expectations the role becomes rather stressful quite quickly, it can seem like management & team leaders purpose is to advise that they are supporting staff whilst doing nothing but dictate and tear down performance if you don't ask a customer if they want a loan. The whole we do not 'sell' we 'educa
ProsPay and Benefits
ConsManagement and Work Culture
5.0
Senior Quality Assurance Analyst | New York, NY | 17 Mar 2013
Sr. QA Analyst
• Working as primary liaison with Business, QA and Development teams for major releases, recreation of customer issues, subsequent patch testing and successful release of patches and service packs to clients.
• Managing and performing hands on project planning, auditing of system requirements, creation of documentation, tracking progress metrics and defects through Quality Center and mentoring the off-shore team.
• Coordinated with the offshore team the project deliverables and making sure the project deadlines are met in order to deployment the application in production on time.
• Setup walkthroughs and live meeting demos for QA offshore team to get the initial view and feel of the application under test.
• Conducted Gap analysis on scenarios and scripts created by the QA offshore team to make sure all the requirements were covered.
• Performed Data Profiling of current state of data in the Data Warehouse by doing Data Analysis using advanced SQL Queries and Microsoft Excel, finding Gaps in Data and formulating solutions for the same
• Involved in producing various reports by extracting basic data from Oracle tables using Toad and sorting and summing the data in different ways.
• Worked closely with the UAT team and assisted them when needed.
• Wrote Test Plans and played key role in dividing the Testing effort between automation and manual Testing teams.
• Setup Defect Review meetings with the IT team and QA offshore team. Send daily testing status report to all the stakeho
Questions and answers about Barclays
How does someone get hired at Barclays? What are the steps along the way?
Asked 30 Mar 2017
Online, few stages on the phone and face to face.
Answered 10 Sept 2019
I was hired through a recruitment agency.
Answered 3 Jul 2019
What is the interview process like at Barclays?
Asked 20 Mar 2017
For the underwriting executive role - it started with a 30 min phone call centered around the barclays values and ethic's. You had to give work example's showing those values 'respect', 'ethical', 'flexible etc. You would obtain the barclays values template from the barclays recruitment department anyway before the phone interview take place. It's just the case, structuring you work experiences around it.
Once pass, you will be invited for a face to face interview. The recruiter will speak to you of the date and venue it will take place and documentation to bring. Most importantly, they will attach about 4 key points where the interview will test you on. Again, you will have to give work of life examples on how you conducted this. It very much involve the STAR technique so would advise people to learn that and apply it for interviews. The interview will take place for an hour and you would have one person asking the questions and another taking notes. Around about 2 working day, they will give you a call whether you have passed or not.
This was my experience of those two interviews, could be different to you lot as you may have applied completely different jobs.
Answered 6 Apr 2018
My interview was unusual because I knew the interviewer from gambler's anonymous
Answered 19 Dec 2017
What was the most challenging part of your role at Barclays?
Asked 22 Oct 2018
Management.
Answered 20 Jun 2021
There wasn’t a school.
Answered 26 Jun 2020
How are the working hours at Barclays?
Asked 18 Sept 2017
Long and unpredictable - usually 08:00 - 18:30 or later
