Rotational Program

Required Skills

  • Adjusts well to change
  • Learns quickly
  • Naturally curious
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Collaborative / team player
  • Proactive / Self starter
  • Disciplined / self-motivated

Typical Day

  • 7am: Attend morning meeting
  • 8am: Shadow trader with morning rebalancing
  • 10am: Update client presentations (pitch books)
  • 12pm: Lunch with rotation colleagues
  • 2pm: Join sales person on client call
  • 3pm: Update prospect spreadsheet
  • 5pm: Review daily trading reports
Meet Sonia Torres, Rotational Program
Sonia Torres, Rotational Program -
Timeline
Why did you pick your program and university?
I decided to complete a Bachelor in Business and Finance because I was looking for a career that would offer me a mixture of mathematical, logical and sales skills. I knew I enjoy working with people and finance offered me the opportunity to work with numbers and people at the same time. Originally from Mexico and seven years after completing my Bachelor Degree I decided to move to Canada. I enrolled at McGill, in their MBA program, with a concentration in Finance. This program was highly recognized internationally and it offered a personalized experience with a small cohort. In addition, Montreal is a lovely and diverse city with so much to offer.
What made you decide to pursue finance once you started university?
Finance offers a dynamic and fast paced environment. The markets react in real time to new information, accordingly you have to be ready for everything and anything. This is something that I love. I wanted to work in an industry that would challenge me every day and Capital Markets does exactly that and it allows me to use my ability to learn fast and adapt to different situations while working with smart people.
What kind of internships or job experience did you complete while in school?
My first job was at Thomson Reuters with the Financial and Risk Department as a Sales Support Executive. I was in charge of helping the Account Managers with Government Accounts and Financial Institutions. I completed a one year internship with them and ended up working full time after graduating in a role with more responsibilities. After that I was hired by HSBC into my first trading role. This experience is what made me realize just how much I wanted to pursue a career in Capital Markets.
Describe your current role and your typical day.
As an Associate in the Global Markets Development Program you rotate four times in one year to different teams within Global Markets. The objective of the program is to help you gain exposure to different asset classes, teams and products. I am currently working with the Credit Sales team and my main function is to support the sales people pricing trades, sending trade confirmations to clients and putting together material that we send out every day to our clients as well as internal reports. A typical day will start at 7:00 AM preparing morning reports; at 7:20 AM we all join a call where traders and different teams comment on how they expect the market to open and the goal for the day (buying/selling and levels) and during the day I help with the trades and updating different files for the team to ensure we can operate properly.
What's one piece of advice that you would give someone in high school looking to a career in your field?
Baby Steps! Start reading news or listening to podcasts about the global economy and you will start to familiarize with the language and it will help you make sense of the information and how everything is related on a macro level. Choose a company you like (for me it was Disney) and follow the price of the stock; try to relate the company news to changes in their stock price. Don’t be afraid to contact someone and ask if they can talk to you about their job, it will help you understand and decide whether or not you will enjoy working on that.
Meet Erica Camilleri, Rotational Program

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