Claire Leach - Tax

• What inspires you?
• Why did you choose to join Tax?
• Can you describe what Tax does?
• What have you been doing since you joined?
• What do you enjoy the most about your job?
• What support and training have you had since joining?
• What qualities do you need to succeed at Barclays?
• Can you outline any inspirational moments you've been involved with?

Transcript

What inspires you?
Well here’s me at my desk and I’m working hard, but as you can see I have a big smile on my face because I’m obviously enjoying myself and then when 5pm or 6pm rolls around, you can see that I’m out and I’m having fun and here’s me playing tennis. I think this sums up one of the reasons I joined Barclays because it has a fantastic work life balance.

Why did you choose to join Tax?
Tax I thought was a good idea because you are always kept on your toes, the rules are always changing and so you can never really get stuck in your ways, which is quite a good thing. At the same time, when I first went to the assessment day I met all the people in the team and they’re the real reason I joined, I think, because I got on well with them and they weren’t trying to trip me up with difficult questions, and at the same time I could really see myself working there and being happy there.

Can you describe what Tax does?
Very basically Tax sort of operates as an in-house tax service to Barclays Bank as a whole. So you get the advisory work, the compliance work and also the planning work. It’s sort of split up into three different departments - you’ve got ops and employment, operational and employment taxes, corporation tax, which is the biggest department and also VAT. So as a graduate you get to spend time in each of the three departments, so it gets you quite a broad overview of what’s going on.

What have you been doing since you joined?
When I first joined I was in the VAT department, and that’s a really good team to work in actually, everyone is great fun, good to work for, and they take time out to teach you the basics which at first, of course, you have no idea what’s going on. It’s good to learn generally what’s happening, and then they get you involved progressively in some really interesting projects, to the point in fact quite early on, where you’re starting out on a project and seeing it through to completion and influencing how it works throughout the process.

Then I went into Corporation Tax, which is where I am now, and that department is much larger than VAT so the work there is much more varied, which can be a good thing of course. And I couldn’t say to you, this is what you’ll do if you go to corporation tax because it can vary dramatically. I’ve been doing anything from, talking to the business about varied points in the profit and loss account and trying to investigate what they all mean and what they’re all for, to investigating the effective tax rate for Barclays and its competitors, to of course, filing and working on tax computations.

What do you most enjoy about your job?
I enjoy the fact that in Barclays tax you are of course learning all the usual business skills, but at the same time you are learning technical knowledge so you come out of there knowing a great deal as well as being able to do a great deal in the business sense. And at the same time we are also learning about the ACA, studying for the ACA and I think that provides you with a really solid foundation for a career in finance, in tax or wherever you may go.

What support and training have you had since joining?
The support and training at Barclays is absolutely brilliant. We have to take a lot of time out to do the ACA qualification and everyone in the team is very supportive of us.

Also HR organise something called master classes which is where you get important people from around the business, senior people to give us an overview of what their area does and I find that really helpful because it lets you see how all the little pieces fit together and how Barclays operates as a whole. At the same time, within the department we have knowledge sharing pretty much every Wednesday, where a law firm or an accounting firm will come in and tell us and teach us about a particular point that we may be interested in.

What qualities do you need to succeed at Barclays?
I think you need to be able to analyse detail but at the same time be able to see the bigger picture so that you can progress things forward and also know where the improvements could be. And at the same time, I think that confidence is rewarded but arrogance isn’t. Obviously you need to have the mental aptitude but also the team-working skills in order to get on well.

Have you been involved in any inspirational moments?
There are several milestones along the way while I have been working at Barclays that have inspired me to continue and pushed me to challenge myself even further. At the beginning, when you join a new department, of course there is an awful lot of learning to be done and you always feel that you are looking to people and learning stuff and maybe having to take some of their time up to teach you the basics. But then all of a sudden you notice there is a bit of a tipping point and you realise that you are really helping the team. I think that makes you feel that you want to continue, pushes you even further and inspires you to come in the next day with a bit of a purpose.