A career in financial advice
Connor Dalton has been working in financial advice since 2013, having ‘fallen into’ the role after university. He tells us about why it has become a job he feels very passionately about and shares his journey so far to becoming a Chartered Financial Advisor.
Like a lot of people, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I certainly didn’t know that being a Financial Advisor was even a job, so, at GCSE and then A Level, I picked subjects that I thought I would enjoy. For A Level, that was Economics, Accounting, English Language and PE. I thought I would really like PE – I got an A* at GCSE and I love sport – but there was more biology in the subject at college and so I didn’t do quite so well. In my second year, I focussed on Economics and added a one-year Maths A Level. Looking back, I’m not really sure why I chose Economics; I think a friend did, so I joined him. Luckily, we had a really good tutor and he taught us a lot. As a child, I remember being interested and a bit scared about the idea that the value of stocks and shares could go up and down. But at A Level, the principle of investing in capital so you can earn more in future really stuck with me. I was at college from 2008 to 2010 during the financial crisis and jobs weren’t that available, so the decision to go to university was partly because of that. I got into Brighton through Clearing to do Economics and Finance. Brighton was a great place to live; it’s not a campus university so I was
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living in the town. I went straight into a house- share with some other people. Fortunately, we were all fairly sensible and we would share the shopping and the cooking between us. It worked well.
Because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do after university, I don’t think I had the drive to do as well as I perhaps should have done. A degree is about effort; you can get so far being naturally bright, but you are rewarded if you put in the extra effort. If I had applied myself, I think I could have done even better. My degree was a three-year course but there was the option to do a year out in industry if we wanted. Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, none of the job options available really grabbed me so I didn’t take that up but looking back I should have taken the opportunity. By summer 2013, I had got my degree but still had no idea what I wanted to do! At first, I carried on working some hours at Sainsburys, just to bring in some money. I was applying to office jobs and graduate schemes that sounded interesting, either because they were local or they were relevant to my degree. Graduate schemes are really hard to get into as so many people apply, and there can
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