Perpetual

Jessamy Burton

People and Culture Graduate at Perpetual / Fordham

I feel grateful that I have been able to take my time to discover my interests and passions and to be working in a field that I really enjoy. Taking time out from study to travel and work really helped to shape my career pathway.

What's your job about?

I am currently working within Perpetual’s People and Culture Team who are responsible for developing and executing the company’s HR strategy. I am lucky to be gaining exposure to the many facets of HR, which includes recruitment, performance and rewards, organisational development, HR systems, and HR business partnering support.

As a graduate, I am in the process of completing four rotations through different People and Culture teams. At the moment I am working in the Talent Acquisition team, who take care of all things recruitment. Often you’ll find me talking to candidates who have applied for roles at Perpetual and booking in their interviews, as well as getting involved with projects to try to optimise our recruitment strategy and processes. I have also been looking at the data and analytics we receive through various systems and have been compiling them into a dashboard. It’s a great mix of connecting with people and my team and getting stuck into a spreadsheet!

What's your background?

I grew up in Perth and didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I finished High School, so I enrolled in an Arts degree at the University of Western Australia. I was fortunate enough to fall into psychology through completing a few elective units and discovered a passion for the science of people and human behaviour. After finishing my undergraduate degree I was ready for a break from studying and spent time travelling through Europe and Asia before I wound up working in the corporate sector. I decided to combine my interests in business and psychology and went back to uni to complete an Honours in Psychology before moving to Brisbane to complete a Masters in Organisational Psychology at the University of Queensland. I was ready for another adventure in a new city, so I applied for Perpetual’s graduate program and moved to Sydney at the start of 2021. Looking back I feel grateful that I have been able to take my time to discover my interests and passions and to be working in a field that I really enjoy. Taking time out from study to travel and work really helped to shape my career pathway, and I hope to live and work abroad one day (when travel restrictions allow it)!

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Absolutely. The people within the People and Culture team come from a range of backgrounds, including various business and commerce degrees, psychology and HR-related disciplines. If you are interested in people and asking questions around how organisations can best support, motivate and get the most out of their employees, this could be the area for you! The People and Culture Team value diversity of thought and recognise that having a range of people with different backgrounds can create richer conversations and enhanced outcomes.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

I was really interested in getting involved with a specific project and, after expressing interest, was able to support the project by conducting interviews with various people within the business, which was also a great way of understanding different roles and business units at Perpetual. Working on this project showed me that Perpetual is genuinely committed to supporting me in finding the areas and projects where my skills and interests fit best!

What are the limitations of your job?

Although being able to rotate through different teams gives me broad exposure to HR, the limitation is that you don’t have a lot of time to really get stuck into longer projects and progress them over six months or a year.

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

Take your time to work out what your passions and interests are. I always felt like I was in a rush to figure out what I wanted to do, but taking a little longer to travel, work and seize unexpected opportunities all helped me to get to a role and career pathway that I am really excited about.
Do things that excite and intrigue you, not because they look good on your CV. The things you do outside of study and work speak to your personality, interests and skills and may be more relevant to a job than you think. I spoke about my experiences surf boat rowing in my interview!
Give yourself options. It can be easy to set your heart on one pathway, working for a specific company or getting a particular job. Keep an open mind to the opportunities around you and take a few risks, whether it be applying for roles that don’t perfectly align to your area of study or considering alternative areas of study or work.

Perpetual

Jai Sartori

Graduate - Perpetual Private

The knowledge and financial skills I’m learning at work are directly translatable to my life outside work, which I consider to be a great bonus!

What's your job about?

At Perpetual Private we offer wealth management services to a wide range of clients such as not-for-profit organisations, small businesses, high net worth individuals, self-managed superannuation funds, family trusts, etc. Our key areas of responsibility include protecting and growing our clients' wealth, building an investment strategy around our clients' investment preferences and risk tolerance, ensuring compliance with relevant regulatory entities and meeting with clients and working with them to ensure all financial needs are accommodated. My current role as a graduate at Perpetual Private has me doing two rotations of six months in different business units throughout the division. My current role is in the paraplanning team where we assist the financial advisors in producing reports for clients as well as rebalancing client investment portfolios and producing modelling & projections for client assets when required. More specifically, a typical day for me involves communicating with our financial advice team regarding their client’s individual circumstances and then, working with the latest research from Perpetual Private’s Investment Research Team, adjust client portfolios and produce the relevant client facing documents.

What's your background?

I grew up in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, in the Dandenong ranges.

I went to high school at St. Josephs College in Ferntree Gully where I graduated in 2015. I then enrolled at Monash University with a double degree in Engineering and Commerce. During my time at high school and uni, I was working part time at Woolworths which really helped to develop my soft skills in communicating with customers. After my first year at uni, I realised that I was much more passionate about commerce and so I decided to enrol in a second major in my commerce degree and discontinue engineering. I graduated from university at the end of 2019, then in early 2020, I travelled to the UK where I stayed with my partner’s family throughout the initial lockdowns. During this time, I was completing an online internship with a start-up impact investment fund that focused on ESG investing. Whilst abroad I began applying for graduate positions back in Australia as I planned to move back early in 2021. One of the graduate positions I applied for was with Perpetual and I was lucky enough that they got back to me and asked me to take place in the interview process. Being on the other side of the world I had to complete an online assessment centre in the middle of the night, which was certainly an interesting experience! After a few rounds of interviews, I was fortunate enough to receive a job offer which I gladly accepted. I flew home in January of 2021 and completed my 2 weeks hotel quarantine in Melbourne. After about 3 weeks in Melbourne, I flew up to Sydney to start my graduate role with Perpetual.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Yes, whilst the basic knowledge that I learnt at uni has really helped with understanding certain concepts and technical skills in my position, I think someone with a different background could do my job. You learn a lot of specific skills that are relevant to the position when you start working and I’m lucky enough that Perpetual provides a good environment to learn and ask questions. The most important skills aren’t necessarily what you already know or what you learnt at uni or school, but how open and motivated you are to learn new things, be adaptable and bring a good attitude to work.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The best part about my current position is the exposure I get to different types of clients and seeing how much an investment strategy can change depending on the circumstances of the client, and the given market conditions. I really enjoy the collaborative aspect of the job as well. Seeing how the different business units come together to provide the best service to the client is really interesting. The knowledge and financial skills I’m learning at work are directly translatable to my life outside work, which I consider to be a great bonus!

What are the limitations of your job?

I’d say the biggest limitation to my current position is the initial learning curve of starting a graduate role, however, this is quite common in the transition from study to work. I have found that whilst my learnings from uni provide important foundational knowledge there was definitely a steep learning curve in transitioning to the workforce. Having said that, as long as you are motivated, open to learning new things and bring a good attitude to work it is very manageable. I was also lucky that Perpetual provides a great environment to ask questions and a structured learning process for the skills in my role.

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

Take advantage of all the opportunities you have through University. Whether that be studying abroad or attending presentations from interesting speakers, there’s plenty of great opportunities available through uni that I probably could have made better use of!
Plan for your transition from uni to full time work sooner rather than later. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your time at uni or incorporate travel or time away from study but try to have some form of plan for transitioning out of study. This will give you peace of mind and save you from thinking too much about the future, which I definitely did!
Make use of all the spare time you have between semesters to do things you’re passionate about. You get a lot of downtime when you’re studying, and one thing I would advise is to try to make the most of it. Whether that be travelling or finding hobbies, it’s probably one of the best times you’ll get to do them!