Accessibility
We know our people are our most valuable asset, that’s why we have built a company that encourages continual learning, teamwork, fun and development. Our fundamental values are: integrity, insight, collaboration and respect and when we are looking to hire into our teams, we want people who can embrace these values and thrive from them.
View current opportunitiesPeople are the foundation of what we do and how we do it. We value our own teams as much as our candidates and clients and give them the flexibility and respect to work in a way that is healthy and supportive. That means every member of staff has a voice to help shape the future of the business.
We actively encourage merit-based promotion and offer two distinct career paths for you to choose from. Choosing one path over another doesn’t mean you can’t change and pursue another route though; we invest in your long-term development and choices.
The “Fee Earner” route allows you to concentrate on billing whilst gaining recognition for being an exceptional, high-achieving specialist recruiter in your chosen field.
The “Management” career path caters to those who want to develop their people management skills and focus on building and leading high-performing teams.
We celebrate success and hard work regularly with high performers lunches, monthly drinks, quarterly socials, summer and Christmas celebrations. We reward and acknowledge hard work and dedication.
We know recruitment can be a fast-paced working environment and that requires balance. We encourage our consultants to maintain their work-life balance with a base annual leave of 20-25 days + bank holidays, 12 additional half-days, monthly 10.30am starts or 4.00pm finishes and two days of paid leave for volunteering or charitable endeavour of their choice. Our commitment to flexible and remote working long predates the pandemic and we have invested in the technology to support this working culture.
Barclay Simpson provide exceptional financial rewards for our teams, including uncapped commission, profit share schemes, management bonuses, annual awards and recognitions on top of highly-competitive base salaries.
Barclay Simpson offer a wide range of benefits to show our appreciation for our consultants’ hard work. From flexible working, pensions, childcare vouchers, cycle to work schemes, private medical insurance and team socials, it’s important to us that our team are rewarded for their efforts.
We take our corporate, social responsibility seriously and have partnered with Heart of the City and Octopus Energy so that, as a company and as individuals, we all have the ability to contribute to a sustainable future.
As a business and a culture, we embrace equality, diversity, and inclusion and seek to promote their benefits in all activities. From partnering with Women in Banking and Finance to supporting the LSE Accelerating Change Together programme, to investing in specialist EDI training, we are committed to equal opportunities for all.
We know recruitment can be a stressful job; both when the market is challenging and jobs are in short supply, and when the market is buoyant and placement expectations increase. We have measures in place to support our team whenever they need it without judgement.
I have been at Barclay Simpson for just under three years and can speak very highly of the firm and the entire team. I joined the business to work exclusively within the banking and financial services sector and Barclay Simpson has given me an excellent platform to develop long-lasting relationships in this space. In addition to the firm’s brilliant reputation and positive focus on career progression and development, the culture and flexibility at Barclay Simpson is something that I believe is unrivalled in the market.
I’ve worked with Barclay Simpson for many years, both as a candidate and as a client building my team. When I was starting out, Barclay Simpson found me 3 excellent career opportunities over a ten-year period that enabled me to make significant progress in my career with some excellent companies. Since then, when hiring they have successfully found me numerous internal and IT auditors, both permanent and contractors, with the specialist skills and experience I needed to deliver our audit programme. The service I have received over these many years has always been characterised by patience and good listening, straightforward honesty, an exceptionally detailed level of knowledge of companies, departments and people in internal audit and a general sense of decency. I’ve always found the people of Barclay Simpson great to work with and I look forward to doing so for years to come.
As a long-term internal audit contractor, I have worked with Barclay Simpson for many years. There are three things that stand out about their service, first the people. I find it quite incredible how long I have worked with Barclay Simpson but how few people I have had to deal with. This builds trust that they understand me and what I can offer clients and what I am looking for from assignments. Secondly, the quality of their client base. They have been around a long time, and I don’t think anyone has the depth of market coverage they have. As a result, I have never had to wait long for an assignment, even when the markets have been tough. Third, the people are great to deal with – lots of care, attention and insight backed-up with great administration, nothing is too much trouble.
We engaged Barclay Simpson to find us a new Head of Internal Audit to cover our EMEA operations. The brief was quite demanding as we and needed a highly-confidential approach to be taken. We selected Barclay Simpson as they seemed to be embedded in the internal audit market and had the depth of experience and skills to manage such a sensitive mandate. The results were outstanding – a high quality longlist was provided very rapidly which was then used to form a five-person shortlist for full assessment. The whole recruitment exercise was completed within two months to very high levels of service. We have since engaged Barclay Simpson on further permanent and contract requirements with similarly impressive results and have extended our use of their services beyond internal audit
We do a lot of recruitment via direct sourcing, but I have always engaged Barclay Simpson to support us with our IT audit needs. This is not an easy area for us to recruit in and I have always valued Barclay Simpson’s expertise in this area, they really are very knowledgeable and have the ability to source high quality IT auditors at a wide range of levels. Their abilities go beyond sourcing for and managing recruitment processes though and I am currently working with them to increase the number of female IT auditors we employ – not easy but they have helped us develop our sourcing strategy and we are making progress.
I was approached by Barclay Simpson for a Head of Internal Audit role. I wasn’t looking at the time, but the initial call was enough to get me interested and I decided to engage with the rest of the process after I was provided with a written brief and had a follow up call to answer my questions and undertake initial screening. I then attended Barclay Simpson for an interview which was very thorough but conducted professionally and with a degree of humour. I felt like they were making a real effort to get to know me as person, rather than just checking facts on a CV. I was selected for the shortlist and thereafter was supported by Barclay Simpson throughout the rest of the process, which required a lot of input from them as the recruitment process had a number of stakeholders in different locations and communication and coordination was an issue. We got there in the end; I was offered the role and was again supported by Barclay Simpson throughout the negotiations to a successful conclusion. The whole process was calmly managed with a lot of time spent by Barclay Simpson on making sure that everyone knew what was going on and that the process kept on moving forward. All very well done.
The team at Barclay Simpson are on my go-to list for compliance recruitment. I recently engaged them to assist in the recruitment of a Head of Compliance. In addition to understanding the role and the company, they really took the time to get to know the candidates, their experience, motivations and preferences which resulted in only well-suited candidates being put forward. I’d highly recommend Barclay Simpson to anyone who is looking for a professional and well-informed recruitment service.
We engaged Barclay Simpson’s financial crime team to undertake a search for a new role for us, Head of Fraud. As this function was a new development for the business we had limited prior knowledge of the market. Barclay Simpson took a lot of time to listen to our needs and then brief us on what we could expect from the market, what our competitive position was and what our budget ideally should be. In good time we were provided with a long list that gave us a good insight as to our options and then a detailed short list that provided us with a focused and consistent strategy for the position. This was a long process as the business needed to feel its way with the role, but it was very well managed with excellent communication maintained throughout keeping all parties engaged through to a successful conclusion.
We were thoroughly impressed with Barclay Simpson’s understanding not only of the current requirements of this position but also what the position would look like in 5 years’ time. Equal emphasis was placed on both finding the candidates with the right skillset but also making sure that the candidate’s values and corresponding behaviours, attitudes and aspirations were aligned with our own. We will continue using Barclay Simpson for support in our legal searches.
We had struggled to fill this role directly at the right level and with the right experience. Barclay Simpson very quickly presented us with two very good candidates that both made it through to final stage interviews. One of them was successfully hired. The eventual hire was completed within a turnaround of four weeks after we had searched directly for a lot longer than that.
The thing that stood out for me was how incredibly thorough Barclay Simpson were in their approach to this requirement – we were highly impressed by the number of candidates supplied and by the breadth and skill level of the candidates they were able to present to us within the agreed timescales. We hired someone who we know is going to build out a best-in-class sanctions function. The business is delighted.
We received excellent service. Barclay Simpson not only really understood the blend of experience, skills and attitude we were looking for in a candidate but were also in control of the recruitment process throughout which made everything so much easier!
Having struggled to fill a senior role within our compliance team for a number of months, we reached out to Barclay Simpson. With their understanding of the nuances of the role and their wide network of candidates, they were able to quickly present a shortlist of excellent candidates and provided support throughout an efficient and ultimately successful interview process.