View from the Bottom: I'm doing the CFA, but most of my colleagues think it stands for Country Fire Authority
The feelings of optimism I had at the start of the year have slowly vanished and I now regret how naïve I was back then. Six months into a very dull job and my motivation is at an all-time low.
However, there has to be something positive to come from this. My career strategy is not carved in stone, it is in a constant state of flux. If once my plan was to move interstate and wow everyone with my supposed talent, I have rapidly realised that this isn't going to happen, which means that at least I have become more realistic.
My employment in a Big Four bank in institutional operations has shown me several things which many people who visit this website have commented on. Playing office politics can be incredibly demoralising and this seems worse the larger the organisation.
Petty politics
It is a sad but true fact that many mid-level managers, especially in bigger firms, lack undergraduate qualifications and have achieved their present position solely by doing what we juniors now complain about for the past 10 to 15 years!
Because they laboured through these many years of "groundwork", they are often resentful, and unwilling to nurture upcoming talent who may be attempting to use their qualifications to climb the corporate ladder more quickly than them.
University itself doesn't teach you how to integrate and succeed in the real world. This knowledge is something you have to develop on your own: discover and refine your own style, and learn from your mistakes.
As a naturally extroverted person, I am starting to learn to curb my behaviour and enthusiasm and become "duller" to fit the mould of my back-office job. Otherwise I have found that I am too much of an easy target.
Should I stay or should I go?
So I want to leave my job because I don't fit in and I am not sufficiently challenged. But if I do, it's six months of groundwork wasted and I'll move into another organisation that has its own version of "office hazing".
This year has fast become the "groundwork" year. It is a catch-22 situation: waste your skills in a job going nowhere fast, or keep job hunting only to have to stay longer at the bottom. A manager recently informed me that my bank doesn't look favourably on internal transfer requests from people who have been in a department less than a year.
But 2010 isn't a complete waste. I completed CFA level 1 and while I don't actually need it much in my job, it is at least a cornerstone that I can build on.
CF what?
I have become aware of how little value is placed on postgraduate qualifications in this country. The fact that most of my colleagues think doing the CFA means I want to join the "Country Fire Authority" has been a humbling experience. Sadly, these people work in finance for a major financial institution!
There is a huge value to networking and I have recently toyed with the idea of undertaking an MBA to increase my skill set whilst creating networks for myself. But this means more study, more expense and more effort. And will the degree be valued by employers?
While I ponder all this I can at least tell you that it must be a better solution than sitting on my hands feeling sorry for myself.
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