Joining the firm as a fresh grad, I was totally ignorant of office dynamics, what a bank does and the different department functions, as well as basic understanding of the structured products that my team review.
I remember stumbling through the office politics, unintentionally offending people with things I failed to say (thank you). Slowly discovering that pointing out my mistakes to everyone was not meant to embarrass me but to teach me and everyone else how to do my work better.
Still so much I don't know about the organisation and it's many many functions but I feel so much more informed about how things work and flow between the different teams and departments.
I've reviewed so many different products, mostly structured rates options, that I previously thought was beyond my feeble mind's comprehension. And not only do I know how to review the trade, but I'm also able to explain (to the many new joiners to the team) on how the different products work.
What I'm most proud of is definitely the process improvement stuff that I worked on for the better half of my time here (which I won an award for heehee). 80% of it was just writing and designing macro templates for the team to use, and the remaining 20% was liaising with internal stakeholders on existing processes to either improve or remove redundancies. The removal of redundant processes, plus the templates I created resulted in so much time savings, that we could actually reduce head count from 12 to 9. :D
And lastly I like to think I was a fully contributing member of the team. Anything I felt that we could improve, I voiced out. Anything I required more information, I asked. I eventually got a lot of random ad-hoc duties along the way and I became the one people went to when you needed something to be done.
Need stationery? Ask val to order. Your second monitor isn't connected? Ask val to fix it. How to add shared inbox in outlook? Ask val. Print notes? Organise team outing? Archive old emails? Everything all ask Val. I never realised how much ad-hoc responsibility I had taken up until I was clearing my old emails in my inbox yesterday.
Yes.. There is that bone-deep contentment when I think back to my time here and see how much I have achieved for myself and my team.
A new chapter begins next week (what a lovely bday present might I add), and I'm excited for what the future holds.
