Welcome back to another Employer Monday blog post! If you read my previous blogs you’ll recall I often talk to employers to find out how they might like to work with Universities and recruit our students. Remember; I’m not a Careers Advisor, this is not advice or guidance, but I’m happy to share my experiences with you!
And, as ever, bear in mind my fickle nature which is prone to falling for every new employer!
The employer visit I’ll tell you about today is a Morgan Stanley…
GETTING THERE
Who doesn’t love a trip to Canary Wharf! Super-busy, clever people running between meetings in power suits and trainers, hugging espressos and smart phones; huge, USA-style buildings made of glass, glittering in the daylight; it is rather like being in New York. But cleaner…
It’s a quick train and Tube ride to Canary Wharf from Bath – no more than 2 hours door-to-door on a good day. Finding Canary Wharf is a breeze – finding a specific bank in Canary Wharf is trickier as whilst they like their buildings big and flashy, they seem to go minimal when it comes to signage! Morgan Stanley like to trick you too – they have not one building on Canary Wharf but two! Fortunately the whole place feels no bigger than campus so even I wasn’t disorientated for long.
WHAT ABOUT MORGAN STANLEY?
It’s another huge, global investment bank right? I must admit, now I have visited a few I am slightly jaded (I know, me! The eternal optimist). They all have amazing graduate programmes, they all have opportunities by the bagful for bright, young things keen to cut their teeth in the world of Finance.
Morgan Stanley are not dissimilar; you can work in Sales and Trading, Global Capital Markets, Quantitative Finance, Investment Banking. You can do Spring Insight, Internships, Graduate Programmes.
But what I liked about Morgan Stanley was their attitude to their own staff. I heard from a chap who joined Morgan Stanley ten years ago having performed very poorly in his Zoology degree and floated between jobs and travelling for a number of months after graduation. After almost a year, he started on a graduate scheme at Morgan Stanley and hasn’t looked back. Now MD of Institutional Equity Division he admitted he still didn’t really ‘get’ finance but his job was to be good with people and win new business and Morgan Stanley had recognised in him, and enabled him to develop, this skillset to succeed.
Morgan Stanley were very clear that there ‘was no room for egos’ and the principle of working there is that you succeed and fail as a team. They have two graduate intakes per year and even these can be negotiated because they encourage new recruits to take a break or go travelling after completely their studies. One-to-one support is provided for new recruits – especially if your degree discipline is not in Finance. Morgan Stanley feel very strongly that they are recruiting the ‘right people’ (but from a mix of degree disciplines, backgrounds, etc) so if things aren’t working out they look at what they are doing wrong; have they got someone in the wrong position or department? After a period, graduates are offered the chance to move in the organisation to find a better fit.
Now I know that lots of big corporates are now talking about diversity and how they treat their staff, but looking back at Morgan Stanley’s history, it does appear that they’ve always had a bit of a social conscience; back in 1940 they raised $1.5million (that was a lot back then) for the US Committee for the Care of European Children.
So here I go again, considering a career change! I don’t have a Finance degree but I’m no Zoologist either, I’m sure there will be something…
If you fancy working somewhere like Morgan Stanley, have a peek at their website for more on Graduate Programmes and the like. And don’t forget to compare the competition; check out Goldman Sachs or Charles Schwab for a start.
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