Relationship Support Manager Review

On a day-to-day basis, my role consists of servicing large corporate social housing clients, including some of the top social housing clients in UK. Occasionally in the week I will be going out to meetings and reviewing the clients day-to-day banking with my RD and AD. I will sometimes be involved in the RD/AD discussions also.

I have developed a lot of new skills, especially skills on how to deal with difficult customers. I have been lucky enough to build my skills in the LifeSkills area too, whereby i am able to go out to some of my clients tenants and present CV & Interview lessons to advise them on how to get ready for 'working life'. i have also built up my presentation skills alongside this and from also taking part in completing fraud workshops/presentations for my clients and helping them to combat fraud on their accounts.

The programme is very enjoyable. It is nice to join the bank, considering how vast it is, with others that are 'like minded'. I am able to study alongside my job, whilst earning money too. Although this is enjoyable, it can be very difficult, especially when the portfolio becomes busy.

The programme is structured well, however, it could be a lot better. There are times when I am in need of contacting someone to do with my apprenticeship and I find it difficult to get a response from someone in the bank. However, I can almost always guarantee that my talent coach is at the end of the phone if I need her. If the lack of communication is improved, the whole scheme would be a lot better overall.

Barclays overall allow us to take 1 day a week as a study day which enables us to focus on our studying. Occasionally, my colleagues will help me with anything that I find difficult to understand too. With regards to the Early Careers team, they can be helpful sometimes, but can be hard to get hold of at other times too.

A lot of support is provided by my training provider, especially from the lecturers. We have forums which we can message our lecturer on, privately or in the group, where we can ask questions or maybe scroll through to see if there is any information on there that may help us that someone else has asked. We also have webinars leading up to assignments and exams which provides us with another opportunity in asking questions too.

The qualification helps with a lot of background knowledge in my role. Things like Monitoring & Control is covered, whereby I wasn't aware what this was before I had learnt about it on the degree. This, for example, is a big section of my day-to-day job, so sections of the degree are extremely helpful in my role. Others are not too helpful now, but hopefully will be in the future.

Yes, there are a lot of extra curricular activities to get involved in, even some within the teams, ie. champion roles. Barclays also run LifeSkill events which are fun to join in with and taking part in these activities are also part of our personal development reviews. Networking events and team days are also run on a quarterly, half yearly basis too.

Yes

It's a great bank to work for. So many opportunities arise from working in a specific team and so many doors open to new avenues. The LifeSkills events is a major factor in recommending Barclays to a friend too. The bank show such good motivation in looking to work with those in the community.

Barclays especially would be to network with whoever you can. There are so many avenues you could go in to and so many fun things to do along the way too. For the apprenticeship, I would say to stay on top of your day-to-day work, work and help those around you and they will help you back and keep organised.