- my European mother moved the family to London so we'd learn English, she looked up the best schools in the country and arranged an interview in each. I was good at music so the best one took me despite my lack of English speaking ability. I picked it up quickly enough to get good grades (at one point was 2nd in my GCSE English class, lol).
- at UCAS time ("pick your uni"), my tutor (this being a good school) pressured me into applying to these Oxbridge universities I never heard of. I got something like 7 mock interviews from various teachers so accidentally aced the entrance interview. I was good at maths and my country likes engineers so I did engineering (another sort of random choice).
- A prof was looking for someone to work in India for a few months, I applied, got it by virtue of being the only one out of 44 classmates who wanted to go. This gave me a taste for working out of comfort zone.
- after graduation, a friend introduced me to a banker in a country I won't name with a very strict visa policy, where I might have worked illegaly on starting a bank. He didn't manage to start it so back I went at the expiry of my visa.
- he sent me a link to the consulting firm's JD, I applied more out of automatism than anything, and my perfect English and prestigious university impressed them or something. I actually interviewed in a different office to the one I should have gone to. Anybody working in consulting in Switzerland needs to master both English and either French, Italian or German. Short supply of that + good uni I guess, so I got the job.
- I applied to over 200 banks and financial institutions. The crisis made it hard. So many interviews. The trading job was one of the few that went to final stage (another one had a whopping 17 interviews). I was interested in global macro/FX so moved into that space internally mostly because nobody else from my intake was as interested.
- some guy called me a cold winter asking me if I wanted to move to Australia, so I said yes, quit my trading job and tried to learn to code.
Every step is, technically, random. Like an opportunity that came about and I just said yes to. Which is why it always cracks me up to see people meticulously crafting their careers and thinking they know where they'll be in 20 years.
The relevant steps:
- my European mother moved the family to London so we'd learn English, she looked up the best schools in the country and arranged an interview in each. I was good at music so the best one took me despite my lack of English speaking ability. I picked it up quickly enough to get good grades (at one point was 2nd in my GCSE English class, lol).
- at UCAS time ("pick your uni"), my tutor (this being a good school) pressured me into applying to these Oxbridge universities I never heard of. I got something like 7 mock interviews from various teachers so accidentally aced the entrance interview. I was good at maths and my country likes engineers so I did engineering (another sort of random choice).
- A prof was looking for someone to work in India for a few months, I applied, got it by virtue of being the only one out of 44 classmates who wanted to go. This gave me a taste for working out of comfort zone.
- after graduation, a friend introduced me to a banker in a country I won't name with a very strict visa policy, where I might have worked illegaly on starting a bank. He didn't manage to start it so back I went at the expiry of my visa.
- he sent me a link to the consulting firm's JD, I applied more out of automatism than anything, and my perfect English and prestigious university impressed them or something. I actually interviewed in a different office to the one I should have gone to. Anybody working in consulting in Switzerland needs to master both English and either French, Italian or German. Short supply of that + good uni I guess, so I got the job.
- I applied to over 200 banks and financial institutions. The crisis made it hard. So many interviews. The trading job was one of the few that went to final stage (another one had a whopping 17 interviews). I was interested in global macro/FX so moved into that space internally mostly because nobody else from my intake was as interested.
- some guy called me a cold winter asking me if I wanted to move to Australia, so I said yes, quit my trading job and tried to learn to code.
Every step is, technically, random. Like an opportunity that came about and I just said yes to. Which is why it always cracks me up to see people meticulously crafting their careers and thinking they know where they'll be in 20 years.