New Year, new career? Or just a new attitude?
Whether you’re considering moving abroad, starting a new job or striking out on your own, it makes sense to seek professional advice.
The stars of the ETF world, across the buy and sell side, have shared their pearls of wisdom with Jobs in ETFs, and the only advice we offer our viewers is to read it.

1) Budding entrepreneurs, ask yourself if you can offer something unique

“Do I have a USP, is it valuable, viable, defensible and sustainable? Finally, am I in a position to deliver that USP? If the answers are all yes, you may be on to something!”

Ted Hood, Co-founder at Source

2) Don’t rule out working for a smaller company

“If you go to a smaller provider and if you are good, you’re going to rise through the ranks much more quickly. Prepare yourself to do the hours, get in earlier than everyone else, leave later than everyone else, listen, learn and it will work out for you. In your mid-twenties, you could be doing a lot better than a 35-year-old at iSharesState Street or Vanguard. However, if you display weakness at a smaller company, lit is really obvious to everyone immediately. So if you go to a small company, you better be confident and good. The ETF industry is so competitive.”

Kris Walesby, Head of ANZ ETFs at ANZ ETF Securities

3) Be a team player

“I have learned through the different opportunities I have had as a manager that cohesion and trust in a team is key. No cohesion, no team, no chance of a long term success.”

Clarisse Djabbari, Deputy Head of Lyxor ETFs & Indexing at Lyxor Asset Management

4) Take note of your younger colleagues

“Don’t listen to anyone above the age of 25, whatever they are thinking will be out of date by the time they have left the room. Put another way, the FinTech revolution is for real, and anyone just starting can ride that wave but they do need to start this journey with a completely different mindset to that of the past. This time it will be different.”

Allan Lane, Managing Partner at Twenty20 Investments

5) Stand out from the crowd

“I have always liked to be where others are not. It’s not that I fear competition but rather why face competition if you don’t need to? Thus I studied Sub Saharan Africa in grad school when every other MA in International Affairs student was studying either the ME or the Soviet Union. It’s why I gravitated to EM in the late 1980s rather than be the 3rd assistant on the US strategy team and why I adopted ETFs almost 15 years ago for my own investing.” 

Jay Pelosky, Founder and CEO at Pelosky Global Strategies

6) Brainstorm new ideas

“The only way to encourage creativity and innovation is to encourage an investment team to stand up to their convictions, challenge consensus, and challenge themselves. Ideas are constantly discussed. Better to consider and reject new ideas than not to have any new ideas at all.”

Alan Miller, Founder & CIO at SCM Direct