Spotlight on Transferable Skills | Joe Crehan, Rathbones

Joe Crehan, Investment Manager, Rathbones

I started my career as a Science teacher on the Teach First programme, an educational charity which aims to tackle educational disadvantage by training highly motivated new trainee teachers and placing them in schools in disadvantaged areas.

My role consisted largely of teaching Physics to 11-18 year olds – who often weren’t particularly keen on the subject, or on the prospect or learning at all. It therefore required thick skin and a tenacious and creative approach to motivate pupils.

My pathway into financial services started with a couple of summer internships with Credit Suisse and Fidelity International while teaching. These introduced me to the world of financial markets and a desire to learn more. I subsequently left teaching to undertake a Masters degree in the Philosophy of Science to pursue an interest in Quantum Mechanics but used this as an opportunity to continue my learning about financial markets and the investment management industry. A graduate trainee role at Rathbone Greenbank then came up on the careers website, and I completed my move into the industry.

Initially, I found it fairly challenging as my role had a very different focus. It was primarily desk/email based as I retrained in wealth management, undertook exams and built up my experience. While I was used to taking on a lot of new information, this was very different to my former teaching role which consisted mostly of presenting on my feet and creative demonstrations to pupils. However, I adapted to the required role, learning new skills in the process and developing professionally. My passion for financial markets and sustainable investment increased the more I learnt.

The key skills I transferred across were presenting, relationship building, and planning/prioritisation of a broad and challenging workload. The latter of these was particularly important in the early stages, while presenting and relationship building helped me more and more as my career developed and became more client facing.

Presentation skills, rapport building and the ability to pitch content at the appropriate level have all helped me in my current role. Making Physics engaging and relatable to 11-18 year olds was great preparation for presenting investment concepts to clients and professional intermediaries who may not have the best understanding of financial markets jargon. Planning and organising classes of students also prepared me well for managing client meetings, portfolios and presentations across the day, which is more the focus of my current role as an investment manager.

Rathbones provided me with a training programme to build up my knowledge of the different aspects of the industry and the role. Some of this was conducted with my peers who were also new to the industry and helped facilitate discussion and build a broader network within the organisation. I was also provided with exam leave and third party training courses to help achieve the qualifications required to make the transition into wealth management.

The key barrier to entry from my experience is that of understanding and jargon, both of the opportunities and the industry itself. Teaching has its own layer of acronyms and concepts which take some time to master, very little of which overlap with financial/professional services in a wealth management context. Making a move across therefore requires learning a completely new set of terms and ideas which many teachers will have had no prior exposure to. For similar reasons, teachers are often unaware of the type of job roles available in financial/professional services or of the fact they have key skills they could transfer into these roles, making them unlikely to learn more about the industry in the first place.

Education is one of the ways that these key challenges can be overcome. Providing opportunities for those in other career paths to learn about the opportunities within financial/professional services and the value they can bring to these roles with their own experience.

One of the strengths and for me attractions of the Teach First programme was its recognition of this. It provided summer internships in financial/professional services firms to provide teachers with understanding, experience and a network. Many of these firms used this as an opportunity to identify talented individuals with key transferable skills and fresh perspectives they could recruit to bring value to their own organisations.