Retail banking- what next?

smithield

Hi all, new to this forum but have been browsing for quite a while.

The advice given on here is usually great so was wondering if anyone could give me advice. I am 28 and got a job in a high street bank last March which was a new world to me. But I picked it up fairly quickly after starting from the lets say, customer assistant role. Help desk, counter/cashier and generally helping with queries etc. I quickly became the highest performer in my area with targets.

After a few months I went into the personal banking type role after my manager asked if I would be interested. So I started this late last year. Basically opening new accounts, insurance, loans and credit cards. Again I am top of the target board in the top 5 in the country and feel I really help customers. I am constantly getting good feedback from them and also praise from area manager etc.

I was just wondering if anyone else on here has this experience as my managers are asking me what my plans are for my development. I soon have my review.

I have never been good at these sort of reviews as I am never quite sure of what I want to do.

My question is - can anyone else who has had a similar experience to this job tell me what they did next? What other roles could I look at outside of banking which I may be good at?

This is the first time in my life I have ever really had ambition in my career. Mainly due to having two children and now a mortgage. I just want to do the best I can and what I am doing now doesn't and won't pay enough. I am very confident in my abilities now and work very hard.

Thanks and sorry for rambling on but feel I am ready for the next step and know someone can help me in terms of what to look for!

Regards, Joe

KentishLady

OK so the point of having a personal development plan is to :

a) ensure you have all the necessary skills, knowledge & competencies to an adequate level so that you can do your current job well - so check the competencies for your job role and assess where you think you are against them

b) identify any areas which require improvement to assist you in your current role (from a) and research any courses/training/mentoring that you could do to help.

c) prepare you for future roles in your career with the company you currently work for. For this you need to identify possible roles you could aspire towards and then do a) and b) for these roles to help you create your own personal development plan.

Your 6 monthly / annual review is to assess your performance against the competencies for the role you are in and against the objectives you agreed at the beginning of the year. Some of these objectives should relate to your personal development - either to make you more effective in your current role or to prepare you for the next step in your career. Your monthly (or regular) one to ones should be an opportunity to touch base to make sure you are on track.

The Bank I worked for do (or did as of a couple of years ago) have a fairly robust PDR process and there are (or were) lots of tools available on the intranet site to assist people in preparing for their reviews. Eg you could look up job profiles for lots of different jobs to see if you needed to work on anything to meet the person spec. Also there was a career planner thing where you could enter in your current role and it would show you which roles you could move into next.

I used to work in a complaints team and we had people who had been personal bankers working with us as well as people from contact centre and from back office admin roles who all made good complaint handlers.

Possible roles you could look at (depending on what is available of course)

• mortgage advisers (you'd need to look up what courses may be available with your employer for you to gain the necessary knowledge)
• complaint handler (if you have any complaint handling teams based near to you)

Have you thought about perhaps sharing your skills/knowledge with others to help your team's performance - (a coaching course would be helpful here)

What about making a move into line management?

Just some initial thoughts to hopefully get you to take a look around the information that should be fairly accessible on the various intranet pages - these should probably be your starting point. And check the internal jobs board - it will give you a feel for what career options you actually have in your local area.

KL