Success Story: from RAF Engineering Officer to Project Manager with Santander

My engagement was coming to an end - I left on time expiry.

I was lucky enough to do the Exec MBA at Cranfield, which helped open my eyes to the outside world, give a different perspective. But, all of my Service experience gave me a huge degree of transferable skills that employers welcome. Specific ‘war story’ examples were useful to take to competency-based job interviews.

A very clear structure, always changing roles every few years, having a lot of responsibility and mixing with like-minded people. Varied and ample opportunities.

Yes – allowing you to uncover what aspects of a role you really liked versus what skills you were really good at. Combining the two exposed some potential career roles I had never considered before. In addition, I found the help with translating what I had done in my military career to be understood clearly by an employer very useful.

I was fortunate to attend a one-week overview of Financial Services at Bishopsgate Financial, and then 2 internships – Bank of New York Mellon and Barclays Military talent programmes. Collectively, this taught me the value of networking, gave me a great overview of Financial Services, tuned my CV, gave me regular interview practice and showed employers I had a real interest in my future career.

Always there for you if you needed. Good sounding board and suggested exploring many other tools and agencies. Able to connect to many useful people and seemed to be present at the different CTP events I visited, meaning you could always catch-up face-to-face.

I did use this to research other options with different companies.

Yes I would – very useful.

I attended a Santander Military Insight day, through the CTP, about a year before I applied for my position, to research and understand what type of roles would suit my skill set, and to do some valuable networking. I met my now boss at this event, stayed in touch with him, and one of the HR directors, who is an RAF Veteran. I regularly caught up with the Veteran and when the time was right, they put me in contact with some bank recruiters. My CV was passed to Hiring Managers – one of these was my current boss, who recognised me (helped through regular contact via LinkedIn), called me in for interview for 5 positions he was looking to recruit for. 2 interviews later (one competency, the 2nd was a case study and presentation) I was one of the 5 chosen. I had worked tirelessly on my CV, shaping it to the role, asking Veterans in the banking world to help me with my CV, got a mentor to give me a few mock interviews, and role-played lots of competency-based questions and answers in preparation. I also had the experience of 2 internships behind me. 

My role entails communicating and meeting with various stakeholders within the business’s financial crime programme, to understand current plans, recognise and flag any gaps, and then put plans in place and coordinating activity to smooth the programme delivery. I am also responsible for writing and securing approved governance documentation to gather and gel plans to support and progress the financial crime programme. The applicable skills are therefore working with ambiguity, coming up-to speed quickly, stakeholder management, using your initiative, being a self-starter, communication skills, looking ahead to plan and forecast, risk mitigation, analysing complex issues and breaking them down into clear solutions. Also involved is driving forwards and communicating plans, being a good team player to support colleagues and juggling a heavy workload. Most importantly as a Veteran you bring diversity with a different perspective, and if you are asked, or you promise, to do something, you will naturally ensure you deliver.

A complete cultural change, and going from expert in my previous role, to being heavily exposed in two ways: 1. A lack of knowledge in comparison to my colleagues for the industry I moved into, and 2. How the organisation worked, and whom to speak with. I therefore made sure I did a huge amount of reading, asked good questions once, keeping a log of my answers. Where I need information from key people, booked a regular slot in their diary to elicit information from them in a regular, but timely manner.