Successful applicants to the newly-announced apprenticeships project will have the chance to gain 12 months of training and support with the possibility of moving into a full-time position thereafter.
As well as in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, the bank’s young recruits will be operating out of Barclays’ offices in London, Northampton, Coventry, Sunderland and Birmingham.
The initiative is designed in part to open up worthwhile skill-gathering opportunities to the rising number of young Britons struggling to find full-time employment.
“Tackling youth unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing the UK economy,” said Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays Retail and Business Banking.
“As a large employer, we want to create opportunities which raise young people’s skills and aspirations, and help them to support future prosperity.”
The UK’s skills minister John Hayes welcomed Barclays ‘ decision to broaden the scope of its financial services apprenticeship scheme, suggesting it should “provide new pathways to excellence for the brightest and best young people”.
Barclays is among the largest banking groups currently based in the UK and operates in a total of 50 countries worldwide, employing somewhere in the region of 140,000 people.
The bank is headquartered at One Churchill Place in London’s Canary Wharf, where dozens of the world’s largest financial services and insurance companies are also based.
Editor’s notes: In December 2023, it was announced that Barclays had extended its lease at One Churchill Place seeing it committed to the building until 2039.