My name is Jo and I work in finance. There I said it. Don’t judge me or fall asleep. I’ll make this quick, I promise. If you listen to our podcast, That Mint Podcast, you’ll know that we often lie about where we work because it’s hard to describe and people immediately look bored. But it’s not boring. Scout’s honour (although full disclosure, I wasn’t a scout).
World of finance
99.99 per cent* of people I speak with in finance, tell me they don’t know how they got into finance. They always say “I fell into finance” like an open manhole in a really bad slapstick routine.
I think this is due to two main reasons. One, the finance sector has a bad reputation. All we hear about are dodgy bankers, finance scams and scheming investment managers.
And number two, there is a lack of financial services education outside of finance, largely due to a lack of appetite for them (see point number one).
Yep, so financial services is the vicious circle of careers. But you know what, those who fall in, rarely fall out. Out of the 99.99 per cent people I speak to, 99 per cent of those love their job and are really trying to make a difference within the profession they chose.
Where to go
And what profession is that? Take your pick. There are absolutely loads. Many with transferrable skills.
Check out my organisation (Verve). We have people in here with history, geography and zoology degrees. They just kinda (yeah, you guessed it) fell into finance, mostly due to the work we’ve done in encouraging just this type of thing with our grad scheme.
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Some of them aren’t even very good at maths. There’s another myth busted. You don’t have to be like Rain Man to work in finance. Or even Russell Crowe in that movie I can’t remember. See, you don’t need to have a great memory either.
Finance is diverse
It is inclusive. It is exciting and it is rewarding. It is all of these things, but it could be more. This is my mission and those of my colleagues at the Verve group and That Mint Podcast.
Our vision is to bust some of those myths and encourage people to do a little more with their money and even consider finance as a career. Be the marker for change that we need.
For example, how to be rich?
- Rob a bank? (I wouldn’t recommend it. You don’t get much cash in jail).
- Inherit? (Great, if you have a rich aunt you didn’t know about. I don’t so this isn’t an option for me).
- Go on Love Island and become an IG influencer (great idea! Let me grab my bikini and factor 40). But actually, if this isn’t for you, there may be other ways…
Did you know that if you saved £20 a week, starting asap and markets permitting, you could be a millionaire in the future? I bet you didn’t. Easy right? It’s one less round of Jaeger on a night out…I’ve coined this “misbehave and save” as in you can still have fun but just try and save a bit too (though I admit that probably needs more work).
Hey, I’m in finance. I’m not a slogan writer. But if you are, there’s probably a job for you here.
*not a real statistic. See, I told you, you didn’t need to be brilliant at maths.
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