Recruiting and retaining the right people

Who are Barclays?
It all began way back in 1690, when John Freame and Thomas Gould start trading as goldsmith bankers in Lombard Street, in the City of London. In 1735, Freame’s son, Joseph, invited his brother-in-law, James Barclay, to join them as a partner, and the name has remained a constant presence in the business ever since.
Family banks like this one, though, found it hard to compete with the larger joint stock banks by the end of the 19th century. So in 1896, 20 small private family banks joined together in a move that created a bank with 182 branches, 806 staff and deposits of £26m.
Further amalgamations and take-overs followed and by 1920 Barclays Bank Limited was ranked third among Britain’s ‘big five’ banks. UK and international growth flourished.
By the late 1920s the first book-keeping machines had been introduced to branches, and from 1945 to 1948, the bank began to offer refresher courses to staff returning from war service. We appointed the UK’s first female branch manager, Ms H M Harding, at the Hanover Street branch in London in 1958, and established another UK first – a computer centre for banking.
From here, the firsts continued. The UK’s first credit card, Barclaycard, was launched in 1966, followed the next year by the world’s first ATM in Enfield. Our Business Advisory Service began in 1973, and by 1981 we were the first foreign bank to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington DC, USA.
On and on it goes, from the UK’s first debit card in 1987 through to 1995 and Barclays being the first financial institution to open a website on the internet. By 1999 we were estimated to be the UK’s most valuable brand, and by 2006 we were making half of our profits outside the UK.
In 2008 we were the first bank to launch a roll-out of contactless debit cards and continued to establish