Apprentice Developer Review

In my role I am assigned to projects, I can work on these projects in the range of 1 week - 6 months or even longer. These projects can vary, but have included development and amendment of code, testing and automation of processes. During university term time, I get a day release to attend university lectures and workshops

I have learnt a range of skills relevent to coding and software development, these include language specific skills as well as general skills such as effective communication and documentation. Developing other skills is easy as well, all apprentices get both a Pluralsight and LinkedIn learning liscence. Which can be used on any of the training available. I have also had the opportunity to become a mentor, which has helped me both with leadership and communication.

I really enjoy it .The units at University are interesting, work is enjoyable and varied and the people that I work with are great! It is rare that any given days are the same, work is varied and interesting. University is a break in the week when you do something different from the norm.

1st and 2nd year are really well organised and structured, 3rd and 4th year seem to be less well organised due to confedentiality with work based projects, but I can understand why they are cautious about the release of information. As more years progress through the apprenticeship I expect that the organisation of the final 2 years will improve.

There's a lot of support available. Not just for work or university related things, but also for my personal wellbeing. For work and university, I can ask anybody on my team and if they don't know the answer then they will direct me to somebody who does. Each apprentice is also assigned a talent coach, they are the go-to person if you have any concerns or issues.

University is 1 day a week, but there is a huge amount of support available. Additional sessions are available to attend within working hours, lecturers will always respond to any concerns or queries quickly and you have a skills coach assigned to you to ensure that you are meeting the requirements of the programme and to help support you to meet them if you are not.

My qualification is extremely relevant to my job role. I have been able to take things I have learnt at work and use them on assignments, and use things learnt in assignments, lectures and workshops for work. I can also ask anybody at work or university about concepts covered in the qualification and help to develop my understanding.

There are a range of different extra-curricular activities to get involved in, we have multiple different sports teams, groups and clubs for things such as gaming and a range of different professional networking events and opportunities. This has continued in the pandemic, less so with the sports teams due to social distancing requirements but there have been countless more opportunites for the latter types of events to get involved in.

Yes

Barclays values are very important to everybody that works here. Because of that it is very easy to feel comfortable and connect with people, everybody is open and honest and the environment you work in is fantastic. Everybody is not only invested in their own success, but also the success of their colleagues.

Sometimes updates for the application process can be a bit slow, don't worry about it. With Barclays being so big, it's understandable that it can take a while. If you are waiting for a call or email to let you know you have got the job, then take the time to relax and know that you did as much as you could. There is no point in wasting energy worrying why it may be taking a while to hear back.