This week's conversation touches on the practical side of finances–working in the finance industry. Join me as I interview Austria-based Karis Onyemenam, an Investment and Strategy professional that works with technology companies across different verticals to source and structure deals, advise company growth strategies, build and manage relationships and assess and analyse financial health. Karis has professional experience across four countries and working proficiency in English with B1 German level.
As a writer and visual storyteller, she explores conflicting identities and the immigrant experience. Her short story, Maison Valentino, was published in the inaugural issue of FLY zine at the University of Cambridge. Her non-fiction short story, The Child & Its Many Faces, was shortlisted for the 2018 Koffi Addo prize for Creative Nonfiction and featured in their anthology.
We will be exploring her experience breaking into the competitive finance industry. She demystifies a lot of myths surrounding working in this field and takes us through her journey at university, with interviews and work experiences, along the way dropping lot of gems on how to prepare yourself for yours and to do so from a place of ease.
Rhieme: Hi Karis, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?
Karis: Thank you Rhieme for asking me to be interviewed. My name is Karis and I’m Nigerian. I live in Vienna and been living here now for 10 years. I studied in England, did my Bachelor's degree at Warwick University in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I did my Masters at Cambridge University in Development Studies, but primarily focused on Development Economics. From there, I started a career in finance, which is what I've been doing to date.
I was working initially in Geneva, within private equity. Then, I moved back to Austria to work
within M&A technology. On a day to day, I work with technology companies across Europe, but also in the US as well. We support them with their funding needs.
Most recently, a deal I worked on was with a company called Kaleido. They are a visual AI company. I'd say they are like a unicorn story because they started in 2019 and by the end of last year, I don't want to quote numbers, but they had really high metrics in terms of the monthly average users they had hit. They surpassed the number of images being processed by them per month. They didn't have any external funding to get to where they were, they were revenue generating so had strong revenue growth, and strong profitability. Though people don't know about Kaleido because this is an Austrian company, Canva is an Australian company that, I think currently valued over a billion dollars, acquired Kaleido. They have also received lots of funding and they're now looking to do an IPO. So that's on the work side of things. And then personally, I write more as a hobby–it's something I've done since, I would say, 12 or younger. I had a period of time where I was looking for a job and couldn't find one. We can also talk about that as well. During that period, I wrote a lot, entered into some competitions, got shortlisted for some things.
Rhieme: Thank you so much for sharing. Even though you're working in a field that is very intense, you haven't forgotten the other things you do by the side that you enjoy, so you've been able to strike the necessary balance.
Rhieme: So, the first question is, as someone who works in this industry, would you say that it's definitely had an impact on how you manage your finances or not really?
Karis: My answer to that question is absolutely no. I do not think a career in finance makes you more financially literate. You need to learn how to manage money. I think education educates you on the wrong things, and it fails to educate you on certain life skills, financial literacy being one of them. I have a lot of people, I've told them what I do, and then they'd ask me, so you invest in stocks? No, I don't invest in stocks. I work in finance, but I can't tell you what stocks to pick. It's the same way how working in finance doesn't make me better at managing money. My job in finance is like any other job. Every job is deliverable-driven. A 'deliverable' is essentially what you're being asked to do and none of those, unfortunately, involve you educating yourself on how to manage money. I would say what my job educated me on is technology. I know that tech is one of the most innovative industries.
Tech is the industry that raises the most money and gets the most venture capital (VC) and
investor money poured in to it. Then Blockchain and Bitcoin happened and everyone said nobody can tell you what Blockchain is but they know it's something that's in. I would say working within that industry has helped me demystify things. So in that sense, I went into my current role to know more about tech. That's what I learned but I didn't learn how to manage money.
Rhieme: That's a very interesting perspective. Sometimes there can be an assumption that because you work in an industry, you automatically know everything. I study Law and I always get, if you talk a lot then you should be a lawyer. But now that I understand the industry better, it actually has nothing to do with that, there is so much more to it. As you said, it's all about learning. Thank you for your honesty because not a lot of people would say that openly.
Rhieme: How were you able to now break into the financial field?
Karis: Anyone who is trying to get into finance knows, or at least if you don't know now, finance isn't one of those industries you can walk in to without experience. Unfortunately, I always say this to everyone, there's going to be some things you know, but especially given the fact that it's your first job, nobody expects you to know much. You're still going to be taught, and you're still going to learn. So, it begs the question: why do people expect you to already have some kind of experience before you break into the industry? The first way I would say I broke into the industry was by experience. When I started out work, I think in my first couple of months, I thought: who's thinking about their career and their future when you just enter uni? You're doing freshers week, you're still trying to figure out how to attend your classes. Towards the end of the year, I was able to apply to JPMorgan, and I got a spring internship with them. That was sort of what got the ball rolling a little bit. Piling up those different experiences helped me break into the industry. I'll tell you 100%, once you have one thing on your CV–and it doesn't even have to be like a big name, it's an indicator to whoever is looking at it, that you're qualified for the role. Merely mentioning that you've helped pitch a book, or that you worked on Excel during some work experience are all things that someone will read on your CV that will also guide the decision making process in terms of granting
interviews.
Karis: I feel like the only time you're allowed to have a CV without experience and be taken seriously, is unfortunately as early as when you are in your first year of university. By the time you finish university, are in your third/final year, or a year post-graduation, people are already expected to have experience. Otherwise, they won't interview you. If you are someone who–and this was a lot of people I knew–in every interview cycle you applied and didn't get your foot in the door, I don't think it's too late for you. The advice I would then give in that context is that when I finished university even though I had experience with some of these investment banks and I had worked for I had done internships for some of them, I was still struggling to get my foot in the door into a permanent role. I had applied to places and had interviews with some, but it was still a bit difficult. My auntie told me that she had a former colleague of hers who was working in private equity and he set up his private equity boutique in Geneva. I basically kept chasing him until he gave me an interview. He agreed, but he mentioned that they were just starting out and didn't really have money to pay me. At this stage, a lot of people would actually say I finished uni, I'm supposed to be getting paid now. But, you're 22. What are you getting paid for?
Karis: A lot of people have that pride that makes them say that they don't want to work for free. If that was my mentality, I wouldn't have been able to break into the industry. I ended up going there and did so well that he did start giving me a stipend. Based off that experience, it allowed me get a full time job. Essentially, you need to have experience to break into the industry. You can go the traditional route and apply to big investment banks, which I did, and I did internships at some of them. And you can try to go through those cycles. Even if you do your spring internship at JP or they don't retain you for the summer, you can apply to Goldman Sachs. If they don't give you the full time role, you can go to Bank of America and work there full time. At the end of the day, all of these companies just look at your experience. If you are one of those people that don't get through the traditional route, don't despair. If you have a summer where you don't have a summer internship, don't sit at home and complain. Go back home to wherever you're from and find somebody who knows another in the industry. Just find and meet them and say I'm willing to work for free. What you need is experience over money when you're starting out. Maybe you get paid. Even if you don't, you already have that seal of experience on your CV. This helps you build up what you need to be able to get your foot into the doors.
Karis: The second thing, to break into the industry is networking. Networking is about soft skills and a lot of people don't have that. In my current job, we have a large network, and we are able to use that to secure funding for the tech companies that we support. Sometimes they're trying to form new connections and with new connections it's all about being persistent. Sometimes you send somebody an email, and they say, let's catch up. You have to keep being persistent, the same way I literally chased that guy until I was able to get an interview. You don't look like a stalker. I can't count the number of times I went for recruiting events and I would collect people's emails and contact them afterwards. I remember I went to this event at McKinsey and the guy was senior. Afterwards, I sent him a note and also attached my picture in the signature. He responded, thanking me for attaching my picture because he talked to a lot of people and didn't remember what they look like. When I was at Cambridge, I interviewed at Bain and was able to form a connection with someone who attended Cambridge and had done the same courses I did. This is how we connected. Sometimes people think a connection is only useful if they helped you get a job, but that isn't the case. Even if they don't help you get the current job, you need to have a network that you can speak to. Think of a network as more of a long term payoff and not a short term payoff. Networks have to be authentic. It's those organic connections that make all the difference. So think of networks as long term friendships.
The third thing is that persistency is key to breaking into the industry. I think some people have been down the very easy route. I had a mixed route. So I think I started off at first being able to get all these internships and spring weeks. Then going through a long period where I couldn't and having to deal with that. In the space of persistency, you will ask yourself if you want to work in a certain industry– is it because you hear that it's prestigious and pays well or do you really think that you can build a career here? You definitely want to keep going for it, not taking those rejections personally. I think the last thing I would wrap this up with is to be very prayerful, because I think there's nothing more frustrating than spending your time chasing after something that isn't for you. A lot of people find themselves in that situation because we get into university, we're still trying to figure out who we are and there's so much pressure to already start applying for things. So I always say this to myself that if I was a doctor at least I wouldn't be confused because I know that I just had to go into medicine. If I was a lawyer, l wouldn't be confused either. There's such a broad spectrum of things you can do and sometimes it's like in one recruitment cycle you're applying for investment banking, in another recruitment cycle you're applying for consultancy and you're always switching in between. If you take time to pray about it and see what God has to say, He will order your steps. Every single job I got were the roles in which I spent the least effort. The ones I spent the most effort on were completely fruitless.
Rhieme: Woah... Karis this is so good! You've dropped so many gems already and there's still so much more to unpack. This conversation is definitely not over... stay tuned for part 2!
How did you find this conversation? What are some things Karis said that stuck out to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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