Barclays BGSC Interview Experience
Interview Experience
I’m a pre-final year undergraduate B.Tech student at Koneru Lakshmaiah University studying Computer Science Information Technology with a specialisation in CyberSecurity....
Full Details
I’m a pre-final year undergraduate B.Tech student at Koneru Lakshmaiah University studying Computer Science & Information Technology with a specialisation in CyberSecurity. Barclays visited our campus in the month November, 2022 for the role of "summer intern" (2023) for the batch 2024. The duration of the internship is from May 15, 2023, to November 25, 2023, which is 6 months. And, after learning this, I was so excited and committed that I should crack this because it was a company that dealt with investment banking, and I was very interested in the services that this company is providing, as well as my desire to be a part of an investment-related service, which I had dream from a long time. Eligibility Criteria as follows. CSE, CS&IT students are eligible. 70% above in 10th ,12th. Minimum of 7.0 CGPA with “No Backlogs”. The recruitment process consists of two rounds, first one is an online assessment that is completely technical, and the other is a technical and HR interview. For the online assessment, internally, our college had kept a few tests in the same format as the Barclays online assessment for practice, and they filtered the top 750 students from the practise test list to attend the Barclays recruitment drive and I was also there in the list. Round 1
Online assessment It was conducted on HackerEarth Platform. • It consists of a total of 32 questions, of which 30 were MCQs based on Java, C++, and Python code snippets, and some core subjects like OOPs and DBMS-related questions; there are no questions related to the networking part. • The remaining two are coding questions, where one was easy and the other medium. We received our results one week after the completion of Round 1. 48 over 750 students were shortlisted for Round 2, and I was fortunate to be one of them. And, Round 2 was an interview.
Round 2 Interview – Duration(30 mins). • At first, my interview is scheduled at midnight, 1:00 AM. I was surprised that all others received their slot timings between 9:00 AM and 6:00 AM. I informed our placement department regarding my slot timings, and they discussed it with HR at Barclays and rescheduled my slot to 12:00 PM to 12:30 PM on the next day. • Talking about the interview round of combined technical and HR interview. The person who took the technical round is the same person who will take the HR round interviews at Barclays. In Barclays interviews are mostly conducted by VPs, and the same was in my case. • My interviewer was so benevolent and he made me felt calm, that helped me a lot to answer to his questions confidently. • Questions I faced during the interview were completely based on my resume, and the first question for me was, "Tell me about you in just one word," which looks simple, but the whole interview will be decided on it. and after that, he told me to link it with any real-time situation. • And then he asked me about project-based and some resume-based questions and I have prepared my resume perfectly and I only kept all the skills and projects which I am confident in. And I mentioned in my resume that I have solved more than 300 problems in coding, so by seeing it, he asked what made you do more problem solving. • The main twist was the power cut at 27th minute, which worried me a lot, but after a minute I was connected back again to the meeting, and my interviewer greeted me with a smile and said no problem, which made me feel less nervous and more confident in my answers. • He asked me to define three values that you follow the most, and then, at last, he also mentioned asking me any questions I have. And that’s how my interview ended up. The final results were announced after 3 to 4 days. Out of 48 students, 15 were selected. After seeing selected list I’m very happy that I am one among them. Got an offer after so many rejections. So do apply for every opportunity that comes in, and don’t get disappointed if you get
rejected. Just wait for that day. Be calm, and practice more.
About This Question
This is a candidate experience report from a barclays interview for a pm role (intern level) during the oa round reported in 2024.
Difficulty rating: Easy
More Barclays Interview Questions
About Barclays Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Barclays. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Barclays are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Barclays interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Barclays reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Barclays Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Barclays reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.