The problem is, when you’re younger, you don’t really know what career options are out there. It all seems very rigid – lawyer, accountant, doctor, nurse – but there are so many more options that you have no idea about, and what’s available changes as the world changes. You can even write your own job role aligned to your strengths, bring it to a company and say, ‘I will do this for you’, and they might agree – and pay you a salary to do that!
No wrong jobs
In the same way, we have a tendency to get really connected to our first job, thinking it’s a lot more important than it actually is; we believe that we’ll be ‘stuck there for life’ and it’s nothing like the area we want to work in. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, ‘There’s certain things I wouldn’t do,’ or ‘I can’t do that, I’ve got a degree!’ But pretty much any job is better than sitting around holding out for the perfect starter role.
As I’ve tried to show you by explaining my own first jobs and hustles, I’ve come to learn that all experience is valuable and can be a springboard to greater things in the future. Working in a kitchen, for example, will teach you time management, teamwork and how to cope under pressure. Data entry will teach you how to stay focused and, at a basic level, to turn up and get the work done even when it bores you! You just have to remember that if you’re doing something you don’t like, you don’t have to do it for ever – but you may have to do it for now. I’ve had people work for me who studied at Oxford University alongside those who have left school at eighteen and worked jobs some would consider ‘menial’. But what I’ve learned is that ultimately it doesn’t matter whether someone’s got a degree or not. It’s all about whether someone can apply themselves to a task, even if it isn’t the most glamorous thing to do, and deliver results. Success lies in the ability to learn and consistently execute.
LIFE LESSON: Sometimes you have to do the lower-paying job or the role you’re not so keen on, to build up the experience that will put you where you want to be.
So by all means have a plan – but keep your options open. You don’t want to close yourself off to opportunity. You never know where your next break might come from. In my own case, after university, I ended up in the City, in the high-flying world of big investment banks. It wasn’t an industry I knew or where I had family that could get me an ‘in’, and I really didn’t have a clue how it all worked. So how did I do it? Let me explain …
Use your network
I’ve always had that overriding sense that I’ll be fine, a mentality I picked up from my mum. I felt somehow I’d be successful, but how – or even what my definition of success was – I really didn’t know. But, as I neared the end of my university course, I did have a wonderful friend from college, Emeka, who was doing a computer science degree at Manchester University. He was a bright guy, going places, and I would confide in him because he inspired me and his door was always open. I would ask him a ton of questions about everything – love, life, careers. Nearing the end of our courses, I happened to ask him what he was doing after uni and whether he’d heard about any opportunities. I was worried. I had no idea what I was going to do next. He shared with me that his friend had just got offered work at an investment bank called Merrill Lynch and was getting paid £30,000 for his first job. Emeka himself was about to do a summer internship there. I was shocked: that seemed a lot of money and a great opportunity. I wanted in. Emeka encouraged me to apply for an internship. He gave me the recruiter’s email, I got in touch with her and she told me there was a Women in Technology dinner taking place, aimed at female students interested in going into the City. Women who had senior roles in technology at Merrill Lynch – directors and heads of departments – would be attending. I wasn’t a tech girl and I knew nothing about the City, so I got my friend to give me the lowdown. In fact, I prepared for this ‘networking dinner’ like it was an exam (although it was super-casual). When the evening arrived, I was ready with my note pad, pen and article clippings to stand out.
The night of the dinner, I quickly noticed the other students were chit-chatting among themselves and not talking to the women who had come from the business. I’m not sure if nerves or hunger were to blame, but I decided to take it upon myself to work the room, dropping in references to all the research I’d done. When it came to the sit-down part of the evening, I was that annoying person with my hand up to ask questions related to the industry: ‘What’s it like being a woman in the business?’, ‘Where do you see the financial markets going?’ The women from the bank seemed slightly taken aback, to be honest – Why is she asking these questions? – but they were intrigued. And I wanted to stand out: I was hustling. That didn’t mean I wasn’t perfectly nice to everyone there. You can be nice – and totally shameless! But I was focused on what I wanted from that encounter, whereas the others were a bit more laid back about connecting with the executives from the bank. I’d gone prepared, and the executives remembered me.
Preparation is key in a situation where you want to impress. You don’t have to think of clever questions off the cuff. If you’re shy or unsure, put together a mental ‘cheat sheet’ for the conversation ahead. In my case, I’d spoken to my friend Emeka, picking his brains about what I could ask, and I knew what subjects I hoped to talk about.
While I was never going to be exactly like my friend, I could learn from him. He even read my statements for my internship application – ‘you could put this in’, ‘watch out, that looks wrong’ – and mentioned ‘my friend Patricia’ to the recruiters, so they looked out for me. Some people suggest seeking out mentors, even people you might respect that you’ve never met before. Go for it if it feels right for you, but you don’t have to do it that way. My friend was my mentor – even if he didn’t know that (till now!).
LIFE LESSON: Associate with people who are doing what you want to do, but who are doing it better than you. Don’t be threatened – you can climb together. I knew my friend was more informed than me, I knew he was on a really good trajectory, so my attitude was: Mate – hook me up! And that’s exactly what he did.
Acing the interview
Soon I learned that I’d passed the first hurdle: I’d been selected for the interview process. But how do you get that great job or secure that fantastic internship when you’ve no experience? It’s the classic frustrating catch-22 situation for a lot of graduates, school-leavers and career-switchers. Again, it’s all about preparation and accumulating a working knowledge of the industry you want to enter. But, at the same time, when you’re starting off no one’s expecting you to be an absolute expert in, say, financial markets. You’ll learn everything when you’re on the job. The key thing is just to demonstrate what skill sets you have. Now, when I was chasing this Merrill Lynch internship, I hadn’t done a placement in the City already and therefore couldn’t draw on experiences I hadn’t had. So I talked about what I did know: I’d always worked in retail, and I had my hair business. I wove narratives – told compelling stories about my experiences – to show the recruiters that I had experience in something.
In my case, I had what seemed like endless interviews. There was a woman quite close to me in age who was in HR – the gatekeeper. Then, there were a panel of men in suits. But my approach was the same: charm, share, talk! You don’t have to be embarrassed about your past experience – draw on it to show, for example, how you dealt with difficult situations