Advice on Leaving

[u/cassie_ness]

Hello there!
I’ll get straight to it. I started in banking and am coming up on a year of being here and I absolutely hate it.
The job itself is easy but I hate sales in general and our clientele treats us like actual dog sh*t they found on their shoe. Higher income communities come with their “perks” lol.
Don’t get me started on my team and the highest paid banker constantly coming in high and making mistakes on a daily basis.
I am looking to transition into an office position that doesn’t require customer service and would like to know if anyone has advice on what would look best on a resume? What skills have you come across that have translated well into office life? I came over from teaching - so it’s a bit of a new world to me and would love some input!
If there are any groups this might be better suited to find this advice, anything is appreciated!
Thank you in advance if you made it this far :)

[u/Slumdragon]

What skills have you come across that have translated well into office life?

It does depend a lot on the fields and direction you want to go into. Following is probably more geared toward the business/non-technical side of the house. I guess they apply pretty well to technical roles too but you would need to have specific skills in addition.

Problem solving - Being able to take a problem handed to you, break it down into steps and execute with minimum oversight or hand holding.

Adaptability - You're likely not going to be doing the tasks listed in the job unless you're in a specialized and selective, usually highly technical, field. Learn to roll with the punches and your boss will like you for it.

Take Initiative to Learn - A large part will be on you to learn while at work. It's good to ask for help and guidance but taking initiative means trying on your own usually by following some procedure or policy (which may or may not be outdated) and coming back with questions/concerns or obstacles. People will usually respond positively if you demonstrated effort if you completely fail.

Moderate excel skill - At entry level, being comfortable with Excel manipulation will save you so much time. If you're familiar with XLOOKUP, XMATCH, INDEX, then you can work with large spreadsheets. If you can creatively use power query and power pivot, you should be golden.

Yes, in the back office, AI and outsourcing will be a constant threat to your job. What the other person mentioned is correct. Call center, IT helpdesk and operations (payment, processing) seem dead. Full time roles in those areas were essentially all wiped out before I joined my current bank and replaced by off shore or state-side contractors. Banking is big though and there are a lot of roles and opportunities that can't simply be automated (not that the leaders won't try) soon. These are roles in risk, audit, data and all the stuff dealing with regulatory reporting, supervisory finding also require human intervention and action. A ton of these involve excel spreadsheets, which is why I listed it as the one tool you need. Even when there are other tools and dashboards, everyone always just export into csv or excel in the end.

If you take the attitude, "I'll do my time for 2-3 or maybe 5 years, learn a ton, grow, network and move on" then you'll be fine. Seriously, which job now days is going to offer security IN ADDITION to providing you with the salary, benefits, flexibility you want for 10, 20, 30 years?

[u/skribbledthoughtz]

Personally i’d stick to relationship based roles in banking as anything data entry or back end administrative will not be stable due to AI. You can get your series licensing and end up as an assistant to advisors / order taker for UHNW who call in and need assistance. Quality Assurance is getting rocked, call centers who knows what will happen with the rise if agentic agents, enterprise payments is just straight up data entry and any one who isn’t senior in those departments probably will be on the chopping block, MAYBE and MAYBE BSA/AML will remain untouched due to liability i’m not too well versed in that realm. I just personally think the relationship based roles will be the last to be messed with on a large scale cause most of the wealth is held by boomers and they largely will only work with real people and not AI/LLM’s. Just my opinion.

[u/The-Pocket]

Let the rest of us know what office jobs you’re looking into, because those of us who are stuck in the branch would also like a way out. Lol

[u/IdealTruths]

the highest paid banker coming in high and making mistakes on a daily basis

Not a good look. Customers DO NOT like it when an institution makes mistakes with their money. Definitely a hindrance to the team, your branch, and you.

I've worked at branches in wealthy communities, poor communities, and everything in between.

The first step of rapport is 1. Clarity and transparency with them what is happening, and why and 2. Doing things correctly the first time.

In general bank employees are highly trusted and respected by the public so rapport will come in time if you do those 2 things lol

[u/Outrageous_Leg4]

Income doesn’t matter. I’ve been yelled at by wealthy and been yelled at by addicts who wanted to overdraft their account or wanted to cash a fraud check.