Barclays Capital Developer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jan 2010 in London, England (United Kingdom) (took a day)

Several online programming skills tests - you know the kind that only test knowledge, not whether people are actually capable of doing a job. I think you are expected to pass these with flying colours.

Face to Face interview:
All the people involved seemed nice enough but everything felt very rushed. This may be deliberate to see how you cope under the pressure. First a brief intro by the development manager followed by trawling through some terribly constructed programming examples of two classes - a cat and a dog?! which you have to critique. Mainly requires exact knowledge of syntax and keywords with little or no emphasis on correct approach or best practice. This is offputting if you're looking for somewhere that aspires to do things properly.

After that I was asked by the development manager essentially to describe what I understood by an agile development process amongst other questions with some implication that I should understand their exact process without having worked in it. I think this is to figure out if you would enjoy/despise bending over and having the large iron fist of Barclays Capital plunge your inner depths.

Another question from them was "How did you have time to do all of these things outside of work?".

When I asked what the "greatest challenges" of working in this role were the near corpse of a man sitting opposite me pulled a face of despair, sighed and groaned "it's just getting everything done. no matter how much you do they [the business] always want more". Confronted with this ghost of my working future and the fact the other two interviewers were barely out of nappies (the sheep settle better in the fold when young I'm told) I decided that the gulf between BarCap and my values was just too wide and I think the feeling was mutual.

The clock ticked past the critical second and the interview was stopped mid-sentence.

I'm told BarCap varies hugely by team so please don't be put off by my experience. I would apply there again with an open mind.