S&T - Sales specific S&T

THIS IS FOR LONDON. The form asked for a state (which are only American) and the country, hence US had to be chosen.

Applied online and did a verbal and quantitative reasoning test which is SHL based.

If successful, your application is then reviewed. A select number of candidates are given telephone interviews before the superday/assessment centre.

Phone interview:
- Competency questions (teamwork, leadership, problem solving)
- General market awareness questions (asked to pick an investment - keep it brief as its HR asking the questions)
- Questions you have

If successful after the telephone interview, you are invited to a one day assessment centre consisting of group exercise, group presentation, individual presentation, and anywhere from 2-10+ interviews.

Group exercise is a very simple priority email exercise where you rank priorities in order of their importance. This is related to S&T to you will see scenarios like:
- Missed call from compliance
- Client query
- Incorrect trade entered
- Credit limit notification from credit officer

You then present this to a group of current Barclays employees who question your thought-process. WARNING: time yourself!

Individual presentation basically involved you getting 30 minutes with 6-8 pieces of information in booklets. You read the memo which instructs you about your manager being away and client X, an Asset Manager wants to allocate Y amount of capital into certain securities which a ZA risk profile and seek a QW return (ZA/QW could be medium/9%). The booklets contain various pieces of information on bonds, equities, and also deriv products and you choose the basket of stocks or the type of bonds accordingly and then present 1-on-1. WARNING: do what the client asks but add value. While the client might state in the memo they want a low risk profile, suggest a deriv as a hedging tool.

Interviews: Here is where BC is unique. Before your superday/AC, your CV is circulated round desks and desks choose who they wish to interview. The minimum number of desks that have to interview you are 2 and the maximum can be 8+ although it is rare to have more than 8.

Before you leave, you are asked to rank your preferred desks and they do the same. If you rank a desk no.1 and they rank you as their no.1 candidate, you are allocated that desk for the summer. If however, you rank a desk no.3 and they rank you as no.1, they wait to see preferences of someone who ranked that desk no.1. In short, you can end up your less favoured desk.

Here you lack control over desk allocation but generally, with a decent profile, the major desks i.e. FICC will interview you.

Each interview lasts 30 minutes and contain a mix of fit questions, market questions and brainteasers.
NOTE: you will know your desk interviews at the start of the day so if you really want to interview with FX sales but were not initially picked, speak to HR. They sometimes make a slot available at the end of the day.

You are told of an outcome either the same day (a few hours later if you finished early) or the next day.

Tips: Apply early. They have 4 superday/AC dates for each year (Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan). If you really want credit sales (hot desk) at BC and then choose to interview in Jan, you risk missing out as two/three candidates could have been chosen in October alone and hence the desk will not be back for the other three.