Home / Career Developemnt / Alumni programme / Alumni stories / Simon Winchcombe
I work in the international marketing team. My job involves the creation, operation and organisation of Schroders global campaigns, events and websites. This includes developing promotional material and a fair amount of ad hoc work. Essentially, I help my team wherever I am needed. This job suits me well and I enjoy it because it requires organisation, attention to detail, team-work, and sticking to deadlines. As well as this, working in marketing requires a creative edge. I believe these are all qualities that I possess. In all honesty, I applied to Schroders with a sales job in mind but was placed in marketing. Although not my first choice this didn’t bother me as I am always eager to learn and embrace new opportunities.
The most challenging thing about my job is chasing other people to ensure work gets completed on time. We normally ask for presentations a couple of weeks before the event to ensure they are correctly formatted and complied. In reality we receive the presentations only days in advance which can make it tricky to get everything ready in time.
I studied maths, economics and biology at A-level. I had always planned to have a gap year where I would work, travel or do both. Therefore I applied to many firms including Deloitte, Accenture, JP Morgan etc. I had varying degrees of success in these application processes. I received an offer from Schroders which I accepted. While London is expensive, I am more than able to survive on my current salary. Top-tip for anybody who is considering moving to London given the opportunity: start looking for places early. The later you leave it the more difficult it will be to find your ideal home.
After my one year traineeship which ends in August I am going to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands to study economics and business economics. My rough plan after graduating is to work for 5 or 7 years, ideally in a global city, most likely London but New York would be amazing. This could be doing anything; I have no idea at this point. Following that I would go back to university to attain my masters. This is obviously not set in stone and I am sure it will change. I think it is good to have a rough outline of what you want to achieve so that you have something to aim for.
My Investment20/20 experience has been a positive one. They have organised talks from prominent people within the investment management industry which have always been interesting; training days to develop our understanding of finance, and networking events so we can meet and share our experiences with fellow trainees in The City. Investment20/20 is great because I would much rather be a new trainee with Investment20/20 to support me than not have them at all.
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