Too Overqualified for Customer Service, Too under Qualified for Operations

Sydneyswans on 29/03/2022 - 15:10

Guys Im in a bit of a rut here I have 8 years of customer service/call centre experience and around 3 years of back office experience. I just went for 2 job interviews via a recruiter who headhunted myself. The roles were in the same organization in the managed fund/Superannuation/Investment space. One role was in portfolio administration and another in customer/ client services. The portfolio admin role I was not successful for as they said I had too much experience in customer service and not enough experience in processing/financial admin. The customer service role I just had an interview for today and already the general consensus by the hiring
managers was "why do you want to go back to customer service when you are telling me your two most recent roles are are in processing?"

In my current role I was led to believe it would be both process work and client services but some structural changes have led to me end back on client services calls and naturally I would rather move into more process centric roles.

My Seek profile and Linkedin are all set to public meaning I get call from recruiters all the time but right now I get calls from basic call centre roles which I don't want, to calls from Fund managers dealing with admin roles that involve high net wealth investments. How can I project myself as someone seeking more complex roles other than customer service?

Education & Work

Comments

  • bobbified on 29/03/2022 - 15:37
    +2

    I have 8 years of customer service/call centre experience and around 3 years of back office experience.

    I would hire you if it was based on experience alone, but how you come across as a person plays a huge role too.

    You've been in the industry for over 10 years. Have you made any good friends? In this industry, people shuffle around constantly and the best way into somewhere else is through referrals. Whenever I change companies, I always pick and choose good people to refer to my new company.

  • Quantumcat on 29/03/2022 - 15:53
    +2

    Could you do some study? I don't know what study would get you into the sort of role you want to do. Maybe an MBA? Or something to do with economics? Then you'll have a wider pool of jobs to choose from, where you won't be either over- or under-qualified.

  • bobbified on 29/03/2022 - 16:07
    +4

    Are you demanding to be able to work from home as a condition of employment? This may actually be the reason why they're not hiring you (but not necessarily telling you). At a junior level, you don't really get much of a say in how the role works. The managers of those roles tend to like being in control.

    Edit: Just realised that OP creates posts but rarely bothers coming back to reply to anything - it seems pretty pointless for us to respond.

    • Sydneyswans on 29/03/2022 - 16:45

      Not any longer. I gave up on that. I just asked if they make allowances for that in each and every role.

  • garetz on 29/03/2022 - 16:08
    +5

    It all comes down to how you do in the interview, the only reason they would tell you you are too experienced is if they needed an excuse to not to hire you without letting you down too badly.

  • rektrading on 29/03/2022 - 16:40
    -2

    Give TradFi the flick.

    Get a job in DeFi.

  • monkeybusiness on 29/03/2022 - 20:41

    Do you actually have domain/experience within financial admin? There always quirks in every industry that only people within that industry would know how the processing works. In the context of financial admin and just off the top of my head here are some topics I would expect a candidate to know:
    - Portfolio accounting
    - Unit Pricing
    - CGT Processing
    - Corporate Actions Processing
    - Security pricing and valuations

    There are plenty more but what I am getting at is that there are a lot to learn in the industry and unless you are applying a junior roles expecting to be trained in many aspects, then you will continue to miss out as you would not be able to hit the ground running.

    Maybe get clued up and demonstrate to a employer that you understand all these concepts so they don't have to train you from scratch as it can take up a significant investment for a company to have to train someone up to know these concepts.

    The alternative is networking and you have demonstrated to former colleagtues/managers that you are capable of these roles and they can recommend you when roles come up in other companies

    • Sydneyswans on 30/03/2022 - 06:53

      Have knowledge and understanding of all those functions though didn't necessarily undertake all those functions in my last roles but portfolio administration roles seem to be what they are calling for. Maybe I could keep on in my current role move into the portfolio admin role and then move onto bigger better things

  • freefall101 on 30/03/2022 - 16:14
    +1

    "why do you want to go back to customer service when you are telling me your two most recent roles are are in processing?"

    This is a very common question in call centre roles, why do you want to do it, because they struggle badly with turnover. This is trying to weed out whether you're not actually interested in customer service and are instead either looking for a foot inside the door at the company to find other roles or are going to jump ship the second you find a better job. It also sounds a good question, if you're not interested in customer service, why are you going for it if that's the problem with your current job?

    Have you told your boss what you were promised and where you want to be? Sometimes it can be worth a chat to get redirected too.

    • Sydneyswans on 30/03/2022 - 17:50

      Thats exactly what the hiring manager for the customer service job made me aware of. The 18 month time frame before you can apply for any internal roles. Not sure if that can be part of contractual obligations but I assume so.

      When they call back to schedule a time for the round 2 interview like they said they would I'll let them know my intentions but high salary could away me accept the role assuming I pass the second round interview.

      "Have you told your boss what you were promised and where you want to be? Sometimes it can be worth a chat to get redirected too". I was offered a position where I thought I would be able to do cross functions of processing and client calls. It was only when a new department manager came through to us at the end of last year that sweeping changes were made and roles were changed to purely one or the other. My direct manager is well aware but his hands are tied and I am unable to deviate from my assigned tasks.

  • Sydneyswans on 13/04/2022 - 23:01
    +2

    Success… Someone saw the light and offered me an operations based role. A support role to client services but operations nonetheless.

  • Euphemistic on 15/04/2022 - 12:04

    A sample size of 2 isn’t very big. Could be they just made up an excuse because you weren’t right for them for whatever reason. Once you get to 4 or 5 rejections for the same reasons then it’s time to get serious.

    As it turns out…. good luck with your new role.

    • Sydneyswans on 02/07/2022 - 20:51

      Thanks @euphemistic but things didn't work out. Hiring someone towards EOFY made things difficullt. It felt like everyone else was just too busy to help in the training aspect. Then they had the mindset of locate the answer yourself or escalate to the relevant team member. But if I didn't know how to deal with an issue then how would I know who or when to escalate if necessary? At least I can potentially return to my previous role.

  • Vote for Pedro on 03/07/2022 - 13:03

    Have you considered applying for roles you are interested in rather than letting linkedin recruiters do the work for you?

    • Sydneyswans on 03/07/2022 - 13:46
      +1

      Exactly what I'm doing as we speak

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