Barclays Interview Questions & Process

Barclays is a UK-headquartered bulge-bracket investment bank with major strengths in M&A advisory, debt capital markets, leveraged finance and Financial Sponsors Coverage. The distinctive thing about its process is how explicitly it scores against the bank's published values framework, RISES: Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship. Candidates who evidence those values concretely read very differently from those who simply describe them.

The process runs five stages and usually takes four to eight weeks. An application and resume screen is followed by timed cognitive and psychometric testing across verbal, numerical and inductive reasoning, then a recorded HireVue assessment of competency questions with around two minutes to answer each, then a live technical interview of roughly 45 minutes covering valuation and financial-accounting fundamentals, and finally a Superday or assessment centre with senior bankers.

In EMEA the final stage typically goes wider than interviews alone and may add a written-case presentation, an e-tray exercise and a simulated group discussion. The group element rewards a specific behaviour: contributing actively without dominating, testing arguments rather than asserting them, and helping the group reach a defensible advisory consensus.

Barclays also runs off-cycle internships, which can be open to final-year students and recent graduates and typically involve analytical and operational support for transaction teams. For candidates who miss the main summer cycle, that is a real second route in.