Perpetual

What's your job about?

I have started in the Sales Team, where the majority of my time is spent working with Perpetual Digital (an arm of Perpetual Corporate Trust) on the Fixed Income Intelligence product. Broadly, the Sales Team is responsible for driving revenue through promoting and (as the name suggests) selling Perpetual Corporate Trust’s products. A lot of what the team does revolves around managing ongoing relationships, pitching and delivering solutions to meet client needs, and negotiating deals. As you would have gathered, the team is highly relationship focussed, but a common misconception is that this is just externally. In addition to maintaining relationships with clients, we are fortunate enough to work closely with many internal teams – such as marketing, product, middle office, etc. – to ensure client satisfaction and get projects across the line. Part of ensuring client satisfaction is tracking performance metrics and hitting targets. One of my roles is generating monthly reports for the team or clients to track our performance and assess whether we are effectively delivering value. For the most part, my work differs every day, however typically, my day consists of grabbing coffee with colleagues, attending internal and/ or external meetings, working away at my projects, and liaising with clients.

What's your background?

I grew up on a farm north of Wagga Wagga but headed off to Boarding School in Sydney from Year 7. Throughout school, I loved all things Maths and PE and worked every holiday back on the family farm. After graduating in 2021 and working a very long harvest, I headed straight to uni where I studied and lived on campus at the University of Sydney. After three short years, I completed my Bachelor of Commerce and in my final year of uni, got an internship at an accounting firm where I worked two days a week. I was also lucky enough to head overseas in my final year of uni for the first time, where I did a typical Euro Summer trip (along with half of Australia it seemed!) and had the best time. I now share-house with three of my closest friends from uni and have been at Perpetual for four months. I still try to get back home as much as I can (mainly to see our sausage dogs!) but I am lucky enough to have built a strong community up here in Sydney from school, uni, sport – and now, Perpetual.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Yes, absolutely! This will sound clichéd, but truly, everyone in our team has such different backgrounds. It is one of the reasons I have enjoyed coming to work and getting to know everyone so much; it is refreshing to be surrounded by such interesting people who are genuinely interested in you as well. Despite our different upbringings, everyone in my team is enthusiastic and hard working (and luckily for me, always up for a laugh!).

What's the coolest thing about your job?

Because my team is client facing, I have loved being able to attend client meetings and events. As a bit of a chatter box and someone who is new to the industry, I have really enjoyed meeting external people in the industry, hearing their stories and sitting in on high-level conversations. As a result, my favourite projects often revolve around completing tasks for clients because it means I get to work with them to achieve a common goal whilst learning more about the industry along the way.

What are the limitations of your job?

This is probably a universal graduate experience, but starting a fulltime job has been quite the steep learning curve! Despite starting to find my feet, I still feel like I am trying to learn everything – from technical skills to client etiquette and everything in between – all at once. Understandably, this is just part of the fun, but it can be exhausting and is something to be prepared for when you take on your first fulltime job.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

1. Go with your gut – back yourself and trust your intuition.
2. Have a crack – say ‘yes’, be open-minded, get ambitious and work hard.
3. It’s not that deep – don’t overthink it, have fun and try again tomorrow.