Spotlight on Transferable Skills | Sharon Boyd, Barclays
Working in financial services wasn’t something I considered or thought about as I left school. But it’s the same as any other workplace really, lots of people doing different things with different skills and experience. I work with colleagues who have been in the bank for over 20 years and interns who are with the bank for about 10 weeks! Everyone has skills and knowledge that they bring to their role.
I left school when I was 16. I passed my ‘O’ grades, and got a Youth Trainee Scheme placement (what is now an apprenticeship) with Glasgow City Council - never really attended college (apart from some short courses as part of my YTS) and didn’t go to University. I left my YTS about 9 months in and went elsewhere.
I re-joined Glasgow City Council when I was 19, and worked my way up from admin assistant to Team Leader. In 2003, Glasgow Housing Association was formed in the city and I took the chance of moving from GCC over to GHA as a welfare rights officer.
GHA went through a period of review, and needed Business Analysts to support a strategic project to review, improve and deliver core services. I was asked if I could help with that, and what was supposed to be a 2 week requirements / as-is mapping session, ended up being a 4-year project where I learned most of my BA and Project Management skills.
Most people don’t realise the transferrable skills they can bring to a role:
Communication skills: being able to actually listen to someone; being able to articulate and explain your reasoning/decision making; being able to clearly write down for all levels of audience (intern to MD)
Organisational skills: one of the real core skills – being able to manage your day, your workload and oversee and manage the workload across my team /projects
Leadership: I use the same skills leading my team as I do leading a project, using the different forms of leadership to achieve the best outcome
Stakeholder Management: being able to deal with people internally and externally, whether that be to gain approvals for tasks; advising and updating on progress; or initial discussions to gather views and opinions.
Enthusiasm for learning: every day I learn something new and the development of my team and colleagues is something I am passionate about and work on across the bank.
When I joined Barclays as a Business Analyst 5 years ago, I didn’t see myself as a very technical person, but using the transferrable skills I already had - here I am now, one of the Senior Operations Managers in Global Technology leading a team that supports some of our applications across the UK, Ireland and Jersey.