My name is Janak Mistry. I studied Geography.
I graduated in 2010 and ever since, I've done
a bit of travelling and after I came back
from travelling I've had a few jobs and the
most recent is the one I'm in now.
So at the moment I work for Lloyds Banking
Group and I'm on their financial management
graduate scheme. And the scheme is basically
two years long and the two years consist of
four to six month rotations; it can be sort
of nationwide or international, depending
on your preference. The aim is you get a sort
of exposure to four different areas of the
bank.
When you come to the end of the scheme, you
also complete your qualification for the Institute
of Fiscal Studies, which I'm doing at the
moment, and you chose one of your four rotations
to build your sort of long-term career in
the bank with.
From doing the Geography degree course at
Kingston I feel there's quite a few transferable
skills that I've been able to build on and
use in work.
I mean quite a few when you talk about things
like working in teams and leading teams as
well. As part of the course we had a lot of
group work and field work and a lot of work
with different situations, different people
and it's not just about communicating with
them, it's obviously about managing them and
managing the time. I think it's something
I've used a lot in work and as well as that,
geography is quite a qualitative subject as
well and with the type of work I'm doing right
now, especially when it comes to market analysis,
because that's the sort of report I do on
a daily basis, that sort of style of writing
really helps because you're already in, you're
used to writing that way so it's not a big
change, so I think they're the two big things
that I take with me.
My three-year course at Kingston; my second
year I spent out in Utrecht in Holland. I
did an Erasmus year that was probably like
the best year out of the whole three years.
It was a really good experience you meet a
lot of different people from different backgrounds,
different cultures and completely different
uni life in London when you're in a different
country. And I think a lot of the things I
picked up there, not just how to adapt to
new surroundings but how to approach and communicate
to different people; it's not just about where
they're from but at the time I was one of
the youngest, I was 19 and other people on
the Erasmus course where 21, 22, 23, and even
older. So I guess it taught me a lot and when
you learn to communicate with different people
like that, you grow in confidence a lot.
When I was at Kingston during the course I
had to do a lot of presenting, or presentations.
We had a lot of, as part of our coursework
for a lot of the modules we had to stand up
and present a project we were doing. And I
think when I first started I was quite nervous
and I didn't do much of that before uni but
I think doing that quite a lot In uni through
the course helps me now because my job involves
me speaking to a lot of executives in Lloyds
and more often than not there is once or twice
a month at the end of the month that I have
to go out and present my analysis of my reporting
that I do.
And I just think from the time I've done at
Kingston I just feel a lot more at ease, more
comfortable, more confident in doing so, I
think that was good.
