I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Barclays (Singapur) in Dec 2010
Interview
Note that the interview I attended is part of the graduate program - might vary for line hires.
Interview process consisted of 3 main parts:
Phone interview (2 weeks after online application submission) - Usual HR questions; why do you want to work for investment banking, why Barclays, tell me about your resume, and stuff like that.
Excel Skills-based Test (approximately 1 week after phone interview) - Test of basic excel skills and some VBA; stuff like vlookup/arrays for excel and some simple stuff you can do with the macro recorder in VBA.
Assessment Centre (same week, after Excel Test) - Consisted of 1:1 competency based interview with line manager, prioritization exercise (give order of priorities on several selected tasks, explain and interact with the other people at the AC), and case study presentation (also 1:1).
Line manager called on same day in the evening, offer was in the mail the next business day. Relatively smooth process - Managers and staff seem relatively nice; HR was mostly prompt and responsive.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
(Case Study Interview) - Tell me what are the risks of following through a deal with XYZ company; given that we had approximately 100 pages of material and about an hour to present, it was hard(er) to give an answer while trying to remember all the numerical details.
The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Barclays (Knutsford, England) in Dec 2010
Interview
I've had 2 telephone interviews with Barlcays for different jobs. First one was very slick. Chap was obvioulsy used to doing them. He was professional and friendly. I was completely at my ease. He only threw me once when he asked me what was the thing about my job I enjoyed the most. I hate those generic question and went into woffle mode. The other interview was very vague with long silences. Neither were technical at all.
The face to face was more technical. Only in that they slid a piece of A4 across the table with various queries on and wanted to know the result of one, fault with the other then a couple of questions about the difference between this and that. The rest of the interview was strictly competency based. At the end I asked them all about how they performance managed and didn't like what I heard. I think this came across an why I didn't get any further.
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