Brought to you by ICAEW Financial Services, corporate career and life coach Stephen Chandler outlines six ways to manage your financial services career in times of uncertainty.

Banks and insurers are under pressure to cut costs as the pandemic puts strain on the economy.

As a result, one of the major concerns over the past few months for financial services workers has been the job market, with businesses challenged and job security at risk.

The uncertainty of the situation, and the volatility of the hiring market, can lead to anxiety over the future.

But what can you do to help address this anxiety, and create a forward-looking career path and opportunities that place you in control?

Here are six tips to consider to future-proof yourself.

Be positive when managing your exit

There is a right way and a wrong way to come to the end of your employment. If the end of a job or contract is in sight, or suddenly lands in your lap, ensure that you exit the right way.

• Count to 10, and absolutely avoid saying the first negative thing that comes to mind.
• Take copious, exhaustive notes throughout the process.
• Contact a severance lawyer.
• Do not call colleagues, email clients, or speak to the press.
• Say nothing until your severance (and inevitable compromise agreement) has been signed.
• Ensure your partner also sticks to the official story.

Identify your ‘reason for being’

The Japanese concept of ‘Ikigai’, the identification of purpose, helps to identify what to do next. Consider the following four lists – relevant to your life – so you can move towards identifying your purpose:

• What you love
• What the world needs
• What you can be paid for 
• What you are good at

If one single thing appears in all four lists, then you have found your ‘element’.

Other overlaps, whilst not the perfect sweet spot, also indicate different, positive things about those things in your life.

Understand your audience

It is critical that you fundamentally understand the audience to whom you will soon be pitching, whether that is a potential employer, investment partner, or an end-user customer.

Get to know what makes them tick, what they need, as opposed to what they think they want, and what you can uniquely serve them with.

Consider how you can pivot

What knowledge and experience can you use to step out of your comfort zone and still be effective and successful by re-skilling or up-skilling?

A client of mine started out in accountancy and pure finance, before swimming upstream to tackle more generally commercial deals and negotiations, and then ended up in an entirely strategic, and C-suite, role in operations.

Polish your LinkedIn profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your professional digital footprint and needs to convey all the above considerations, whichever twists and turns you have made. It needs to be focused on your targeted area.

Any new potential hiring manager will check your profile and it needs to be up to date and polished.  This includes using the active present tense, even for previous career listings.

Rather than using the profile headline as “chartered accountant”, try and use something refreshing and different to stand out. This can be targeted towards a sector or desired job function.

An accountant acquaintance of mine’s profile memorably carries the headline, “Smashing up the accountant stereotype” on her LinkedIn profile, while the rest of her image breaks down the clichéd image of an accountant with breezy, yet professional, social-media style posts about her life and work. It’s one way of standing out.

Learning lessons for the future

And when it then comes to the day you land your new job or assignment, put the following into practice:

• Insert a termination clause in your employment contract, before you start work with the new outfit
• Schedule ongoing networking, regularly
• Raise your visibility, carefully, by getting active in a trade body, or a non-conflicting NED position
• Watch out for exit signs – be aware and alert to the indications
• And, then, if necessary, volunteer to be terminated – you might be able to retire from that pay-off.

The prospect of losing one’s livelihood, with its knock-on effect on our identity; separation from our work ‘family’; and damage to our ego, is never nice. But you can help yourself find the silver lining, and take back control of your career.

About the author

Stephen Chandler originally trained as a pilot, before starting a career in advertising management; first with network agencies such as Ogilvy, GGT and JWT, and then latterly with his own agencies.  In total, he has founded, run and exited four advertising agencies and one gaming company.

He is now running Chandler & Friends, a Coaching & Mentoring consultancy – with many high-profile one-to-one clients, and several corporate clients.  He is also the co-chair of a creative advertising charity, as well as being Non-Exec Chair of three start-ups.