GUEST COMMENT: How this man made the transition from middle office trade support to front office trading

During my first few years of college, I was set on going to medical school and becoming a doctor - but I kept hearing about finance and investment banking from friends, and got a lot more interested in those over time.

Like many others, I heard about the lavish lifestyle and money and wanted that without really understanding what was involved.

Through cold-calling and networking, I got a couple finance internships with local firms in my area, but these were all 'fetch-the-coffee-type-experiences,' where I just did grunt work for financial advisors. I got some full time interviews when banks came to my campus to recruit, but I never made it past the first or second round interviews for any front office roles.

This meant that I had nothing lined up after graduation. To make things worse, I decided to go on a three month trip to Asia with my parents straight after graduating. Luckily, I stayed current with recruiters and always made myself available for phone interviews - otherwise I would have had no chance.

By the time I got back, I'd exhausted all my connections - and the ones I could still go to were unhelpful because I had bombed my full-time interviews.

So I tried the next best alternative: I went for the Hail Mary and applied to positions via banks' websites.

They weren't helpful for front-office roles, but I managed to find a trading support role on one bank's website that seemed alright, even though it was a middle/back-office gig. I sent my resume and application, and actually got a call back - so I went in to interview there.

The interviews weren't too difficult - and I actually told my interviewer straight-up that I was doing this because I wanted to become a real trader eventually.

He was sceptical because he had heard that line many times before - he pretty much said, "That's fine, and we hear that a lot, but to be honest a lot of times it just doesn't work out. Sometimes you have what it takes, and sometimes you don't."

Anyway, I got the role, which was a standard trade support position. I did a lot of P&L reconciliation, helped with trade settlements, and more tasks like that. I learned a lot about trading, but got bored early on because a lot of the work was repetitive.

Networking without being annoying

To begin with, I didn't do much networking, especially compared to all my peers. They took the approach of, "I'll ask the traders lots of annoying questions, buy them lunch, and suck up to them so that maybe they notice me."

This backfired and it just annoyed the traders - none of my peers who took this approach advanced to the front-office.

Traders won't think of you as a peer if you use this strategy - networking in the workplace is different from networking at university.

During my first week on the job, I did some networking with the traders, but I didn't ask many personal questions - I limited myself to business and asked about how trading worked, why they made certain trades, and so on.

My big break

My chance came when my group was handed a big project - we had to completely revamp the order management system, which controlled the whole flow from how a trader makes trades to how they're recorded to how everything is synchronized.

That project put me in contact with a lot of traders and people from other groups at our bank, since the order management system affected everyone.

I used that project to take the initiative and to get to know traders better - but I still didn't do it by sucking up or asking personal questions.

Instead I came in and said, "Hey, I noticed you were making trades this way - but actually if you changed X, Y, and Z, we could increase the efficiency and save xx% more time per trade, which would help you make $xx more money."

I positioned myself as an asset that could make them more money as opposed to an obnoxious middle-office guy who kept asking annoying questions.

Leapfrogging to the front office

As the project was underway, one of the traders left to move elsewhere - so I asked the head trader, "I noticed _____ left, I was wondering if you guys were considering anyone to replace him."

Make sure you've developed good rapport with anyone you ask these types of questions to - you can't just grab some random MD and ask him for a job.

He said that the trader who left had a lot of experience and that I wouldn't be able to fill such a senior role, but that my name was on the short list for a junior role that they had. They weren't sure of their budget for the next year, so it was still up in the air.

I had impressed them with my work on that revamp of the order management system, but 2 other factors helped me as well:

1. The head trader wasn't an alumnus, but he had gone to a nearby university and knew my school well.

2. The head trader had also come from the back-office, so he was more sympathetic to my background.

A few months after that, my boss brought me into a conference room - and for a second I panicked because I thought I was getting fired! Instead, my boss told me that the head trader wanted me to join their desk as a junior trader.

It took me almost a year, but finally I had the offer I had been looking for ever since university.

Needless to say, I pretty much accepted on the spot and made the move over to the trading desk.

My advice to anyone to looking to do the same

If you're in a similar position, my advice is, "Make your own opportunity." Don't go about your day just reconciling trades and settling positions - solve problems, be proactive and look for ways the traders could save time or make more money.

You can't be annoying about it or constantly pester them - instead of asking about models and bottles on Thursday nights, go and say, "Hey, I noticed you were doing X, Y, and Z, but I think if you made your trades this way instead you could make a lot more money."

Wherever you are in a bank or on a trading desk and whatever you do, you are constantly being judged by everyone who is affected by your work. Though back/middle office and other ops jobs may seem trivial, they are quite important to running a good trading desk.

Missed/wrong bookings, missed trade confirmations, and poor reconciliations can lead to lost money and lost clients - don't focus on impressing the front office directly, but be proactive in your own job and most of the time, it will make theirs a lot easier.

The bottom line: Do your job, do it well, and foresee and fix issues before they happen.

A version of this article first appeared on Mergers & Inquisitions a website dedicated to helping people break into investment banking, and to maintaining their sanity while doing so.