Applying for a job at Barclays does not involve submitting a CV and cover letter in the traditional sense.

Whilst you may have to upload a CV to apply, the company will assess your suitability for the role
through a series of assessments that require you to answer interview-style questions.

The assessment process culminates in a face-to-face interview.

There is a four-stage application process at Barclays:

Registration of Interest

Business Insight – Stage 1

Business Insight – Stage 2

Barclays Business Meeting

During this process, the company will assess candidates using a variety of different tests and
assessments:

Numerical reasoning tests

Diagrammatic tests or logical reasoning tests

Situational judgement tests

Personality tests

Verbal reasoning tests

An e-tray exercise

A case study exercise

Video interviews and telephone interviews

Face-to-face interviews

Questions put to the candidate during their video assessments and interviews will be largely
competency-based, but there are likely to be some situational questions as well.
Depending on the job role, there could also be technical and quantitative questions.

Contents

What Is Barclays Looking for at Interview?

Barclays Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

Questions for the Interviewers

Final Thoughts

Further Reading

What Is Barclays Looking for at Interview?

When you book your interview, you will be advised on the (up to) five competencies you are going to be
assessed on – different jobs require different competencies.

The Barclays website holds competency guides for each level ,so it's a good idea to read through and
think about how you meet the criteria.

There are six key traits that Barclays looks for in its employees:

Teamwork

Resilience

Responsive Learning

Relationship Building

Numeracy Skills

Critical Analysis
You should also refer back to Barclays’ company values when preparing for the interview process. They
are:

Respect

Integrity

Service

Excellence

Stewardship

Barclays Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

It is likely your interview will begin with a few general interview questions to get the interview off to a
positive start. These questions will be pretty straightforward so make sure you can answer them
confidently.

Tell me about yourself

What are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?

Why should we hire you?

What is your greatest accomplishment?

Competency-Based Questions

A key element of the Barclays interview is competency-based questions. Competency-based questions

The questions you will be asked are all directly linked to the competencies required for the role you are
interviewing for. This is why you are advised on the key competencies for the role at the point of
applying.

The best way to ensure you give strong answers to competency questions is to prepare. Barclays tells
you which competencies you will be assessed against, so you have the luxury of time to craft the very
best answers possible.
Here are some examples of competencies for an analyst role at Barclays:

Supports colleagues with their development by offering help and support

Actively supports change and other initiatives by encouraging others to do so

Reprioritses own activities to respond to new information and changing requirements, while staying
focused on results

Based on the above competencies, here are some examples of questions you might be asked at Barclays
if interviewing for an analyst role:

Tell me about a time you supported a colleague with their development by offering help and support

Give an example of how you have actively embraced change in an organisation you have worked in

Tell me about a time you reprioritised your own activities to respond to new information and a change
in requirements

The questions are designed to assess whether you meet the competency criteria.

When answering competency questions, you need to give some background on the situation, outline the
task, go into detail about the actions you took and then finish with the result. This process is known as
the STAR technique.

Think about the strongest answers you can give for each competency you are given. A good start is to
look through your CV; think about the jobs you have had and see if you can think of any examples of
how you fulfil the competency.

If your work history doesn’t offer up strong examples, think about your hobbies, work experience and
relationships with people.

Remember:
The interviewer is looking for what you have achieved personally, so try to use ‘I’ and not ‘we’.

Don’t use negative examples of how someone was incompetent and you saved the day – keep things
positive and show that you are professional and a team player.

Try to get a range of examples together from different places – don’t use the same examples or ones
from just a single previous role.

To put yourself in a strong position, get a few examples together for each competency so that you have
a lot of information to draw on.

Barclays-Specific Questions

As with any interview, think about the interview questions you will be asked about the role and about
Barclays itself – and how you will answer them.

Examples might include:

Why Barclays?

Why this division?

What do you know about this division?

What could you bring to the role?

What issues are currently affecting the banking industry as a whole?

What type of research did you undertake for this role?

How does your business area fit within Barclays?

What issues do you think are currently affecting Barclays clients?

What would your response be if you were asked to manage a group, and what would your approach to
management be?

Tell me about a goal you have achieved in the last three months
What challenges face your specific division?

Situational Questions

Situational questions assess your response to workplace scenarios. By studying the personal statement,
job description, competencies and any other material you have been given concerning the position you
are applying for, you can second-guess the types of questions you might be asked and come up with
strong answers.

For example, if the personal statement has ‘willing to adapt to change’ in the ‘essential’ category, and
the job description states, ‘Takes direction and reprioritises work to accommodate new requirements’,
one can expect that the candidate might be asked a situational question like:

“What would you do if the objectives for the project you were working on were changed by
management halfway through?”

The best way to answer a situational question is to refer to a time when it happened to you.

In the case of the example above, rather than trying to explain speculatively how you would cope with
change, talk about a time when this has happened and tell the interviewer how you handled it.

If you know this kind of question is likely to come up and you have no examples to give, think along the
lines of – was there a time when your sports club faced last-minute changes that affected their place in
the league? How did you react? How did you motivate your team members and stop them from giving
up?

Simple everyday situations can often offer excellent examples, as long as you plan your answers and
their delivery.
Examples of situational questions you might be asked by Barclays:

Tell me about a time you managed to persuade someone to take your point of view

Tell me about a time you had to change your approach to be understood by someone else

Tell me about a time you had to deal with a problem in a team

barclays interview questions

Business Area Questions

Depending on the role you are interviewing for, there may be some specific questions which relate to
the business area you are applying to:

Technical Questions

Here are some examples of technical questions you may be asked:

How is data stored? How does the garbage collector work? When does it get used?

What's the difference between an abstract class and a class?

How do you use reflection? What are the advantages of reflection? What are the disadvantages of
reflection?

What does hashCode() do?

If I implement cloneable, what methods should I override? Why would I want to implement cloneable?

What's the difference between an Array and an ArrayList?

Can I call Java from C++? Can I call C++ from Java?

How do you use threads in Java?

How can you implement a semaphore?

How is inheritance different in C++ and Java?

Sometimes quantitative questions will have a correct or incorrect answer, and sometimes the employer
is just looking to see how you would approach the question. There may be a correct answer but it’s
often obscure and the employer isn’t worried about you getting it right.

Here are some examples of quantitative questions you may be asked:

Question: What is the sum of the numbers from 1 to 50?

Answer: This question has a correct answer, which is 1,275.

The best way to work this out is by noticing that when you pair the first and last numbers, the second
and second-to-last numbers and so on, the result is the same (1 + 50 = 51, 2 + 49 = 51, etc.) All you then
need to do is work out how many pairs there are from 1 to 50 (50 divided by 2) and then multiply that
by 51.

You can do this for any consecutive number sequence by using the formula: (n / 2)(first number + last
number) = sum (n= the number of integers; in this case, 50).

Question: How many Dairy Milk chocolate bars were sold in the UK last year?

Answer: This question does have a correct answer, but the employer is extremely unlikely to know it.
They are more interested in how you get to an answer – the process you take and the logic you use.

For this question, you might estimate the UK population, then divide that by the key age groups
consuming Dairy Milk. You might then estimate how much Dairy Milk each group consumes in a year.
Adding the amounts together will give you the total amount in a year.
You could show your acknowledgement of popular chocolate days and seasons in the UK – like
Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

What is important here is that you show your thought process. The interviewer wants to know how you
think around a problem and is less interested in the figure that you give them at the end.

Make sure you speak your thoughts out loud when you are working through questions like this, so the
interviewer can understand how you approached the problem.

Investment Banking

If relevant to your application, you may be asked specific questions about Barclays Capital and also
investment banking in general:

Why investment banking?

How do you value a company?

How is a merger/acquisition structured?

Questions for the Interviewers

It’s often just as important to ask questions at an interview as it is to answer them. Asking the right
questions can demonstrate your interest in the company and your commitment to the role.

Here are some examples of questions you could ask at the end of your Barclays interview:

“Are there any opportunities for training and personal development in this position?”

This demonstrates personal determination, your commitment to career progression within the company
and a keenness to develop your skills.
“What do you consider to be the key goals and objectives for this role in the first 12 months?”

This shows that you are aware of the impact your role can have on the company and your keenness to
produce meaningful results. It also shows that you are keen to hit the ground running straight away.

“What are your goals for this department (or you could say ‘company’) in the next five years?”

By trying to establish where the company sees itself long-term, you are suggesting you intend to serve
the company for at least this long. You are also demonstrating a sense of personal ambition as well as an
interest in the organisation.

“How does my role fit with the organisation as a whole?”

This demonstrates your interest in the workings of the business and how your role fits within a wider
context.

“Is there anything else you would like me to go into detail about?”

This shows confidence and self-awareness – you want to talk more about what you can offer and why
they should hire you.

Final Thoughts

The key to a successful interview is preparation. Often, when individuals haven’t prepared for
competency-based and situational questions, they use one example for all of their answers or talk too
generally.
When planning your competency responses, keep in mind that the employer wants to see a wealth of
experience from you as an individual.

Don’t get flustered or panic if you think you have given a wrong answer. More often than not, the
employer is looking for your ability to keep a cool head and use logic and your knowledge to get to an
answer.

Barclays advises candidates to find out as much information about the company as they can before
arriving at their interview and suggests looking at Twitter, in national newspapers, at the business press
and on its (corporate) website to find out more.