Do you think the same way I think?

I joined Ebusinessware’s Reference data wing as trainee on January 18, 2004. This is my first job and I got this after lot of job search. There was a 3-month intensive training, which was a kind of an introduction to the vast financial world, however in this whole training section, the actual job was a mystery to me. I was in an imaginative world where the actual job was some kind of high-end financial analysis. I think the credit goes to the trainer and the training module, which was designed to cover all the aspects of the job.

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Now after the training, day arrived when I was allotted the computer and some entities to be researched. Frankly speaking, I got disappointed, may be because the job was not as per my expectation. At that day, it took me whole one day to complete one entity. I was not in a situation to shift my job and also the money was an important factor, as I was getting pretty good compared to any other company’s pay scale. Anyway I continue with the job.

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Now days passes, initial 3-4 months were tough and irritating as my error rates were high and the productivity was low or may be because of the admin who check my records. She was non other than my colleague Nidhi. She was a terror at that time.  Somehow, I start taking my work seriously, not because I started loving my work, because I don’t want to see my name published in the daily error report and the improvement start showing. As time passes, unknowingly my knowledge of various markets, corporate world & financial products etc started increasing and this was due to the exposure towards 100’s of markets around the world that we research.

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In Jan 2006, I got an opportunity to visit client site in US and there my whole perspective of my data job changed. It was a great experience to meet many Raters, Risk analysts, Data specialist, Capital modelers etc. and to understand what they do? How this data that we research is being used? What’s the impact of inconsistent & inaccurate reference data? And many more concerns. I have seen peoples who have spend their whole life in understanding and improving the quality of data that these big financial institutes rely so much. The knowledge that I had gained in the last 2 years really helped me in making my mark at the client site. I almost spend 1.5 year in US based on the client request.

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After introspecting my experience in the reference data management, at the personal front, I think this is a great platform for any analyst to grow in terms of knowledge and a great exposure towards various financial markets. The job itself teaches how the financial market works, what are the corporate laws, how each economy works, various financial regulatory laws, corporate actions & their implementations and much more. The knowledge that we gain here won’t be taught in any colleges or any institute.

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I don’t agree with people saying that data work is monotones and boring job. I think it’s the way you take it. There should be an openness and will to grasp information that is lying around. Eagerness and curiosity towards your work is required to make it interesting and will give you job satisfaction. The complexity of the reference data is its changing nature, which make this work more competitive, and that is the reason for the ongoing demand.

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I think we all go through a same kind of mindset. There are many young analysts in data team going thorough this phase and this might help in motivating yourself. Hope this work for you.