3 Bits of Banking Career Advice I’m Glad I Ignored

Looking back over my banking career, I received a lot of advice from seasoned, well-intentioned individuals, often with many years more miles on the clock than myself.

Some of it was solid gold career advice. Advice that enabled me to work in a couple of countries and change the trajectory of my career. It’s important to find ways to stay relevant.

But not all of the advice made sense for me. True, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing and only with the benefit of time have I truly been able to see what was useful and what wasn’t.

The message is to not assume that all advice is aligned with how you see the world. As such, there’s nothing wrong with critiquing what you get told and where the thinking comes from.

Still, looking back, there were a few pieces of advice that stick out:

“You should build up some experience in a branch”

It was my first job. Somehow, I’d managed to earn a role as an Administrative Assistant in a new corporate banking unit in Mayfair, London, for NatWest Bank.

I’d like to say it was down to my dazzling interview skills. In reality, it was pure luck. The unit had just been set up and they needed someone fast. Part of my appeal was also that this was an entry-level role but I was a graduate. They could underpay for the perceived skill set I brought to the table.

It was a steep learning curve. After all, I didn’t go through the standard graduate scheme. I learned on the job. And I learned pretty fast.

Yet I still recall a conversation with a senior banker there. He had joined the bank from school, worked his way up to become Head of the department. I think he was a bit wary of graduates that were fast-tracked to glory, having not had to earn their spurs doing all the mundane jobs he had done.

And I see his point. It could have been good grounding. I would have learned about banking from the ground up. It wouldn’t have just been theory and assumptions. I would actually understand how my unit fitted into what the branches did.

But I didn’t take the advice. In reality, going into a branch would probably have turned out to be a huge backward step. The environment wouldn’t have suited me. I needed to move forward, shape my own training and be more focused in my career progression.

The visibility I earned in my subsequent roles eventually took me abroad. And there was no turning back.

“Don’t waste your time investing in individual stocks”

This wasn’t banking career advice as such – just advice that had an impact on my career.

It was a comment made by a colleague of mine soon after I joined a stockbroking unit as a junior investment analyst. It was an odd thing to say, given that my job was to make recommendations to clients on what UK stocks to buy.

In many ways, my colleague was ahead of his time. In recent years we’ve seen the rise of passive investment vehicles at the expense of active management. But this isn’t a debate about the pros and cons of either approach. My colleague’s angle was more to do with him putting money into property and relying longer term on his pension. He didn’t like the risk of buying individual stocks.

From my perspective, investing my own money gave me a better understanding of the process.  It gave me skin in the game and stock market insights that I don’t think I ever would have got watching purely from the sidelines.

I was walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Did it improve my career trajectory? Don’t know. But I was certainly more connected with the investment world as a result of my actions.

“You should join us at XYZ Stockbrokers”

It was the early 2000s and I was working for NatWest Stockbrokers. I was part of a team of six.

Our parent company was defending itself in a bitter takeover battle. As part of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s defense, our business was to be split – one part spun-off and sold, one part to be merged into the much larger private banking unit.

At this point, we all had a choice. To join the private bank or the spin-off. The spin-off would have meant staying with the rump of the old business, just in a different format.

Meanwhile, the alternative was to join what was at the time the most prestigious private bank in the UK, Coutts & Co.  Whichever choice I took, it was going to be a period of uncertainty.

Our team split down the middle. Some wanted to keep some form of status quo, which the spin-off maintained. That was the suggestion made by my boss and one of my colleagues. “Why would you want to work there? You just become a smaller cog in the wheel. Their vision was about keeping the band together. It was also about better the devil you know.

But I could see the potential at Coutts. It had a name, it had overseas offices, it had scale. It was a new opportunity.

In the end, three of us went to Coutts and three to the spin-off. Within three years, I found myself working in the private bank’s US office.

I can’t deny that I’ve been lucky along the way. But it was about being in the right place at the right time