Generalist Sales - Allison Lobb

Investment Banks have the most extraordinary number of jobs within them, it can be completely mind-boggling. Every time we went near one we found a whole new department or group of people that do something we’d never heard of. This seems to be due to the immense specialisation within banks where it can be quite possible to sit next to someone but have no idea about what they do.

There are a couple of major distinctions worth highlighting. Investment Banking or ‘IBD’ tends to be the department which most people imagine when thinking about an investment bank. They are the one’s doing huge M&A deals, putting in incredibly long hours (14 hours+ each day including weekends for months at a time is not uncommon) and schmoozing with business leaders. Work/life balance is not easily found but on the flip side the work you do will likely be high profile and give you an enormous breadth of business and finance experience. This means that if you want to leave London or Investment Banking at some point you shouldn’t have a problem as the skills gained are very transferable. We met ex bankers in companies ranging from renewable energy start-ups to large pharmaceuticals.

Capital Markets is where you’ll find the traders, salespeople and research analysts. They’re market based and are the one’s you see on TV shouting down phones, sat in front of 5 of computer screens. They’re monitoring market activity and reacting immediately to any changes. It’s noisier and a bit more adrenalin fuelled than IBD. One of the big perks of Capital Markets (other than the actual job), is that the hours tend to reflect those of the market. That means early starts with most people in the office by 6.30 but it also means you tend to be out by 6.00 in the evening. And there is almost never weekend work. So if you’re an early riser the work/life balance is pretty good especially compared to IBD. One limiting factor though is that you’re in a highly specialized role usually in a very specific market area, so there’s not much in the way of transferable skills. If you’re an FX institutional salesperson it’s not that easy to move into another product area and you’re going to be tied to working in London (or another major financial centre).

Beyond these two areas you have a massive range of middle and back office functions. There’s technology, operations, legal, finance, marketing and HR for a start. So if finance interests you then it’s definitely worth looking at the breadth of what’s on offer. The other thing that struck us about banks was just how diverse they were. Without doubt they had the most mixed workforces we saw, with every member of a team often from a different country. What that means is when you’re applying for a job you’re not just up against your peers in this country but across the world.

Who are you and what do you do?

Graduate Jobs and Internships in Banking and Investment.

What attracted you to this career?

It wasn’t really something I had thought about and didn’t really know much about the career involved until I started going to some presentations.  Everybody at university wanted to go into investment banking and I kind of went with the flow and when I got there enjoyed what I heard.  In particular it was probably the direct contact with the market and the current news flow which attracted me and basically you are constantly involved in the markets and the general news and that really interested me.

What does your job involve?

So effectively you could call my job a stockbroker and there are two sides to it.  One side I am speaking to asset managers, pension funds, hedge funds and advising them on what company shares I think they should buy and sell.  On the other side of my job I am basically the relationship manager with those clients of mine and helping them across the board whether it be they are trying to raise money, whether it be they need to deal with our fixed income department or our foreign exchange department, I am the face they come to whenever they want to be connected throughout the firm.

What do you do on a typical day?

On a typical day, I normally get to work at about half past six in the morning and just do a read of what happened in the US markets overnight and any news that has come out in the markets since I have been out of the office.  Morning meetings at seven o'clock and basically we go through any research reports that have been written on specific companies and we go through the news flow that has come out over night and during the day and talk about the implications of that.  That finishes about half past seven and then I start making some calls to my clients.  Every client has a different need, some want calls once every week, some want calls every hour so you basically tailor the research you have got into the clients you think need it.  That basically lasts all morning and at least when I am in the office, I am generally on the phone to clients sorting out any questions they have come back to me with.  I do spend a lot of time out of the office, whether that be taking our research analysts or taking different corporates to go and meet my clients.  So I am out of the office in general once or twice a day.  It does involve a lot of lunches and quite lot of dinners with analysts, corporates and with clients themselves to help build your relationship.  In general I finish at about six o'clock, if I'm not out for the evening.

What are the best bits about your job?

The best bit I would probably say, effectively I am paid to read the news everyday, which to me is a pretty good thing to do.  The best bit would be contact with my clients and you get to speak to some of the brightest people in the market, who have a really different way of looking at things and I think that is very stimulating intellectually to try and understand what other people think about things and tailor that to what we think on things.  Just the daily contact with the news and with the underlying happenings of the world - that is what really attracts me to what I do.

What are the worst bits about your job?

The bad bits I would say are having to get up really early after having late night out with clients, because no matter how late you stay out with clients you still have to be in at half past six in the morning to help deal with all the other clients and that is probably the worst part of the day when you are hung over and very tired and just want to go home.

What has been your greatest achievement?

What I'm most proud of? When you do you first trade it is obviously very exciting I can still remember the stock, the client and how much the trade was and that was obviously very exciting.  Bringing new business into the firm and then in general the transactions that we do because we do a lot of the initial public offerings or when clients are trying to raise money, we go and ask clients for money and it is always very satisfying at the end of the day when the deal has been done and you know your clients have contributed a lot to the actual proceeds that the companies have tried to raise, so that is satisfying knowing you have really achieved something and helped the firm out with something that is important to them.

Any regrets?

If I was going to change anything, the thing I would change would probably be the time that I spent in the beginning trying to learn about the company and the basic workings of the firm and the workings of the market.  Unfortunately it is a very steep learning curve and you have got to get up to scratch quickly.  So if there is anything I could change I wish I just had an extra year in between to kind of consolidate everything I had learnt at the beginning.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

The pay is competitive and is certainly in line with other graduate jobs my peers at university were starting on as well.  There are a lot of perks in the job, certainly more so than at other firms where my peer group work, for example all the client entertaining.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

I would say we are very steady, I work Monday to Friday pretty much six thirty to six every day, I am normally out once or twice in the evenings.  I don't generally work weekends, I maybe do once every six months just to catch up where I am behind but in general not weekends at all.

Is there much in the way of travel?

Not so much travel, it is very much dependent on where your clients are based; I have a lot of clients based in the UK so my travel is just to see the clients.  I have one or two clients based in America and on the European continent so I do get to travel to see them a little bit, but no travel is not really a key part of my job.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

I think you don't necessarily need to be in a big financial centre, you just need to get the information and basically you can get that off the TV or Bloomberg and so on and so forth; you can definitely access that from home.  It does help to be in an office rather than working at home, because it is all about what the flows the we are seeing throughout the market so communication with my colleagues of what their clients are telling them as well is fundamental to adding value to my clients during the day so you could work from home but you probably wouldn't want to.

What is the working environment like?

I work in a team of about twelve people and we are probably even split male and female.  The work environment is very busy we all sit very closely to each other and there are not separations between the desks so everybody knows what websites I am looking at and visa versa I know who they are on the phone with and so on and so forth, there is not much privacy.  But it is a great team and there is a great atmosphere of camaraderie between everybody which is fantastic. 

They do insist that we wear suits and smart clothes at all times apart from casual Friday in the summer, which is always a highlight.  But is it quite a smart culture anyway.

How did you get into your job?

I did a degree in economics and politics and I did get a 2:1.

I interned at the firm in between my second and third year and was offered a job on the graduate programme and I did take that up so I would say the key to me getting my job was through the internship really.

And what does the internship entail?

The internship was in sales, I worked in foreign exchange desk for five weeks and I worked on my current desk for five weeks.  I wasn’t tied to a desk when I came back to the firm though we did another rotation programme and it just coincidentally happened that I ended up on the desk that I happened to have interned on.

For example what I do now verses what I did on the internship on the equity sales desks, it was pretty similar to be honest it still involved summarising the morning meeting picking up on the key news events of the day, I had to do a mock phone call on the desk every day at about four o'clock after I had had time to prepare the stock I was going to talk about and understand what the companies did.  I would say in foreign exchange it was the same, it was all about buying and selling foreign exchange and getting to grips with the bidding offers on either side of a foreign exchange transaction there is obviously another currency so it was really getting your head around that.  There was always a big project that comes with every desk on top of the day to day task, which you do as a member of the team.  On the foreign exchange desk I was constructing a database, basically looking at market expectations for all the economic figures that come out verses the actual figures and what impact that then had on various currencies within the market.  On the equity sales desk I did a big project on the nuclear industry and what part of the chain of nuclear energy would necessarily be the best part to play over the next few years, given that nuclear was going to be such an important energy source going forward.

What's the application process like?

Basically it is a CV and covering letter which you submit and I think there are now some online tests which you have to do and then basically it is a six interview process, you have four interviews, two interviews with junior members of the firm and if you get through that round you get invited to another four sets of interviews with more senior people in the firm and from that you will either be made an offer or not.

What are the key skills required for your job?

Doing my job I would say there are three key skills.  One is confidence, because you have to be confident and able to pick up the phone and call people no matter what the time of day, no matter what the situation going on around you is.  Communication is key because it is all about what people are telling you and being able to get your message across in a very concise manner.  The other thing is probably multi tasking because you could spend all day reading a Tesco report and call someone to talk about it and they say well I don't care about Tesco I want to talk about Carlsberg and suddenly you have got to switch from that and at the same time you will have messages flashing on your computer and somebody else on a phone next to you shouting at you and it is all about being able to multi task.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

It is a competitive industry and in terms of what my top tip would be it really is just to be yourself, because as well as being competitive it is a heard industry and there are a lot of people who think they are destined to work there and actually really struggle with the work when they get here as well.  So my advice would be to be yourself because if you are meant to be here then somebody will see you and you will get hired and you are probably going to enjoy it a lot more knowing you haven't come in with a face which doesn't necessarily fit to the job description that people were looking for.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

The career progress is pretty good; if I was to stay on my same team in general you have got a two to three year promotion horizon before you move up.  In terms of the actual work, does that change much as I get more senior?  Yes and no, most of the senior people have a junior person working underneath them who do all the meeting bookings and admin, which you probably don't do as much of when you are senior.   Probably as you get more senior you work more on the relationship side because your idea generations almost second nature, where as when you start out you are very dependent on the research and on doing a lot of reading. 

I would probably say within the same team, you move away from the day to day stockbroking as such and probably move more towards the actual management side as you progress but from outside my team there is a lot of opportunities from where I am. You could move pretty much move to any other sales desk across the firm so from foreign exchange to prime services so as long as you have got the clients then you are in a very good position.  I could also move to be a specialist sales person so focusing on one sector rather than the entire market, which is what I currently do.  Pretty much the sky is the limit actually, you could move to one of my clients so to run my own portfolio and invest my own money and my own ideas, so there are a lot options open to you.

Where do you see the industry going?

That is a good question and every year there is a different hot spot where the graduates turn up and wants to work on that desk and that desk alone.  I would say more than anything though the current market environment is probably highlighted how hot spots are not actually very hot because six months ago everybody who turned up wanted to work on the structuring and the CDO's and the mortgage origination and structuring business and that is unfortunately what has caused the banks to lose so much money and most of those desks have actually been shut down.  In terms of where the real growth areas for the firm comes from it is quite cyclical so it wouldn't surprise me if there is another structuring role that does start to reappear now that the markets have started to calm down slightly.  Emerging markets is obviously the key across every product area it is spanning out into that and accessing the money that hasn't been accessed before. But in general I am probably the opposite, I would be tempted to go for the more stable areas the ones, fixed income, foreign exchange and things that globally the economy actually needs to survive, so I am more on the risk averse side rather than anything else.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

I think I would be quite flexible to move into a management consulting type of role.  Obviously teaching you have definitely got the skills you would need in that environment.  I think you do learn a lot of skills and it is very steep learning curve and I think it forces you to mature a lot faster and the key transferable skills I have probably learnt are maturity and how to cope in a business environment really.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

For my job what is important is the news generally so to know what is going on is key so reading the newspaper every day is key.  I personally am not one of these that thinks you have to read the financial times every day as long as you are reading the business section of a newspaper, then you will be up to scratch with what is going on so for me it is really important to know what is going on from a macro point of view and knowing what is going on with the companies, but I think you can find all that information in your daily newspaper as long as you actually read it and take it all in.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

A good question, I always wanted to be a lawyer as a child and my mum told me that I would be a good teacher so who knows to be honest.