My Working Day: Winifred Bullock

Winifred Bullock, 18, is a Cryptography Analyst at Barclays, working at Radbroke Hall in Cheshire. She lives in Congleton, Cheshire with her parents, sister and a farmyard full of animals. She talks to us about joining Barclays as an apprentice, the joy of teamwork – and buying a flock of sheep with her first pay packet.

My alarm goes off… at 7am every morning. I wake my little sister up and help get her ready for school. I’ll make us both a packed lunch, check my dad has fed the dog, drop my sister off and head to work. I live nearby so it doesn’t take long to drive in.

My working day… starts with a team meeting to plan for the day ahead. I’ll then communicate with different areas of the business to ensure everything is running smoothly. I’ll usually have lunch around 12pm, eating at one of the communal areas on campus. In the afternoon we’ll have more meetings, to progress the deployment of cryptography for different services.

My job involves… meeting with project teams, understanding their requirements and timelines and liaising with our suppliers, all in order to deploy cryptography – using security algorithms and cryptographic keys that ensure that private data is kept secure.

I started working for Barclays… when I was 16, four weeks after completing my GCSEs. I came to an open evening here at Radbroke and met with a bunch of different companies, such as Aldi and Bentley, who were advertising apprenticeships.

Barclays seemed like the most interesting scheme, and was definitely the one that appealed most to me. I was encouraged by the fact they offered apprentices an opportunity to obtain a degree, something I am currently working towards. As I started my studies early, I’m on track to get my qualification a year before my friends from school. After applying I was invited for an assessment day, where we completed a number of tasks, so Barclays could gauge our strengths and weaknesses. The following week I was accepted onto the scheme.