Barclays HireVue Interview: Questions, Format, and a Worked Answer

Barclays uses a HireVue video interview across its graduate and internship programs. Candidates report 4 to 6 questions, 30 seconds to think, and up to 2 minutes to answer. No retakes on the scored questions.

Barclays interviews are strengths-based more than most banks. Expect questions about what you enjoy and what comes easily to you, alongside the usual behavioral prompts. Those questions are easy to underprepare. This page covers both kinds with a worked answer.

Want a run-through first? HireVue practice gives you the same timed format with your answers scored, free.

The clock and the format are the same HireVue product every employer uses. The timing guide covers what happens when the timer runs out, and how HireVue scoring works covers what the recording is scored on.

Barclays publishes its values as respect, integrity, service, excellence, and stewardship. The reported questions combine those with strengths-based prompts about what energizes you.

• Strengths. What you naturally do well, with proof of it, not a claim.
• Respect and service. How you treat a customer or colleague when it is inconvenient.
• Integrity. A decision made the honest way.
• Drive. Something you finished that nobody made you do.
• Motivation for Barclays. A reason tied to a specific business and what it does.

Build one story for each line above. Every question below is asking for one of them.

These are the questions candidates report from recent Barclays screens, with the competency each one is built to test. Your set will be a mix of these and close variants.

1. What do you enjoy doing most, and how does that show up in your work? (Strengths)
2. Why Barclays, and why this business area? (Motivation)
3. Tell me about a time you provided great service to someone. (Service)
4. Describe a time you had to keep going when a task got hard. (Drive, resilience)
5. Tell me about a time you did the right thing when it was not the easy thing. (Integrity)
6. What would your friends say you are best at? (Strengths, self-awareness)
7. Describe a time you worked with people who thought differently from you. (Respect, teamwork)

For the shape of each answer type, see HireVue interview questions by format. For the answer structure itself, the STAR method guide has worked examples.

Question: "What do you enjoy doing most, and how does that show up in your work?"

"I like finding the pattern in a mess of information. At my part-time job at a bike shop, the owner kept a paper book of repairs. I typed six months of it into a spreadsheet on slow afternoons, not because anyone asked, but because I wanted to see it. It turned out that one brand of brake made up a third of the repeat repairs. The owner changed what he stocked. At university it shows up the same way. I am the one on the group project who wants the data first and the slides later. I lose track of time doing it, which is the honest sign that it is a strength and not just a skill."

Why it scores: A strengths answer needs proof and energy. This one has an unasked-for project, a result, and a sign the person actually enjoys it. About 60 seconds spoken.

Specific to Barclays:

• Prepare two strengths answers. Barclays asks what you enjoy and what you are good at, and they are not the same question.
• Have a service story from any setting. Retail, hospitality, tutoring, and volunteering all count.
• Say the business area. Barclays runs investment banking, corporate banking, and consumer banking with different work.

For any HireVue:

1. Day 1. Write one story per competency in the list above. Two or three sentences each: the situation, what you decided, what happened.
2. Day 2. Say each story out loud on a two-minute timer. Most people run long the first time. Cut until each one ends on the result with time to spare.
3. Day 3. Run the reported questions cold, in one sitting, no notes. Then set up the room: quiet, camera at eye level, light on your face, wired internet if you have it.

The full setup checklist and a five-day version of this plan are in the free HireVue practice guide.

After you submit, results often take a week or more. Here is how to follow up after an interview if the window passes, and a salary negotiation email for when the offer comes. Applying for a move up where you already work? See promotion interview questions.

Company guides in this series, each with the reported questions and a worked answer:

• Goldman Sachs HireVue (investment banking)
• JPMorgan Chase HireVue (investment banking)
• Morgan Stanley HireVue (investment banking)
• Citi HireVue (banking)
• Bank of America HireVue (banking)
• Deutsche Bank HireVue (banking)
• Bain & Company HireVue (consulting)
• Boston Consulting Group HireVue (consulting)
• Deloitte HireVue (consulting and professional services)
• EY HireVue (professional services)
• Unilever HireVue (consumer goods)
• PepsiCo HireVue (consumer goods)
• Amazon HireVue (technology and operations)
• IBM HireVue (technology)
• Boeing HireVue (aerospace and engineering)
• Hilton HireVue (hospitality)
• Delta Air Lines HireVue (airlines)
• McDonald's HireVue (restaurants)
• Shell HireVue (energy)
• PwC HireVue (accounting and professional services)
• Accenture HireVue (consulting and technology services)
• Vodafone HireVue (telecommunications)
• Kraft Heinz HireVue (consumer packaged goods)
• Wells Fargo HireVue (banking)
• BlackRock HireVue (asset management)
• UBS HireVue (banking)
• United Airlines HireVue (airlines)
• Emirates HireVue (airlines)
• Marriott HireVue (hospitality)
• Johnson & Johnson HireVue (health care)
• PNC HireVue (banking)
• Kaiser Permanente HireVue (health care)
• KKR HireVue (private equity)
• Keurig Dr Pepper HireVue (consumer goods)
• Target HireVue (retail)
• Walmart HireVue (retail)
• Nike HireVue (sportswear)
• Macy's HireVue (retail)