Did I contradict myself? No, I didn't.

Hi there guys, I had recently posted that my company has opened an office in Singapore and we're looking to hire up to 4 people to staff that office (yes we're hiring, so get in touch). So in that post, I stated that I don't care if you have a degree or if you do have a degree, where you got it from or what you've studied. Now I had been sent a message from someone who questioned what I had written because in the past, I had "put down" and "looked down on" people who had degrees from private universities (his words, not mine) and that it was ironic that now I am stating that I am happy to consider all applicants regardless of whether or not they have a degree or if they did study at a reputable university. Did I change my mind about people who have degrees from private universities? No silly, they are still a con - degrees from private universities are not worth the paper they are printed on, that's what I believed and I still believe. However, I thought I would use this example to illustrate what my considerations are when I am looking for an ideal candidate to fill a position.

This is a job that doesn't require a degree! 

When a lot of people read a statement like that, they assume that I am looking for someone like a receptionist, a very lowly paid position reserved for uneducated, unskilled people but that couldn't be further from the truth - this is a highly demanding, difficult job. I'm merely stating that the kind of skills you need for a job like this is so specific that no degree programme in any university could possibly prepare you adequately for it. After all, we are dealing with a very specific area of trade finance here: short term commercial paper. Even if you did do a degree in banking and finance, guess what? It's just probably one short chapter in one module that you weren't even tested on. Now there are some degrees in 'trade & finance' which are quite general, but trying to find a degree specific enough is like trying to find a degree about the San Andreas Fault. Now that's just not going to happen - at best, you're going to find a degree programme in geography or geology which deals with earthquakes and different kinds of fault lines where tectonic plates meet in general as part of the degree programme, but you're never going to find something that specific. If you're really that fascinated with the San Andreas fault, then perhaps it can be the subject of your thesis or dissertation as part of your degree programme, but if you're that determined to make something as specific as the San Andreas fault the center of your degree, you're still going to graduate with a degree in geography or geology. Likewise, what we're dealing with here is such a specific area within finance, no university course can possibly cover it in enough dept to make you a expert on it - so I am simply looking for a candidate who can get their head around the concepts of how trade finance works quickly.

What is trade finance then?

So allow me to share with you how it works in a simple example: I love Parmesan cheese and it takes approximately 12 months for the cheese to age before it is ready for consumption. This means that the cheese producer has to sit on stock for a full year before it is ready to be sold, but given the high demand for quality Parmesan cheese, cheese producers often can sell the cheese in advance. So for example, if they know that they will have a batch of cheese that will be ready on the 1st February 2021, then they can probably get an advanced order for that batch of cheese, so they don't need to worry about whether or not they can sell the cheese once it is ready, they can just focus on making more delicious Parmesan cheese. However, such products are often only paid when the goods are finally delivered, so even if the cheese maker gets an order for a batch of cheese that is to be delivered on a year from now, that invoice isn't going to be paid till February 2021 and in the meantime, our cheese maker has a lot of bills to pay in the cheese factory. So let's imagine that batch of cheese is worth $100,000 - I go to the cheese maker and offer him $90,000 up front right now, so the money will be in the bank by the end of today. But when that batch of cheese is finally delivered  on the 1st February 2021, I will be the one collecting the invoice for $100,000 - so effectively, I have made $10,000 profit for simply advancing the cheese maker some money if he cannot afford to wait a year to be paid for his batch of cheese. Now you may be thinking: why would the cheese maker accept $90,000 today instead of waiting a year for $100,000? Well, if the cheese maker has many bills that need paying today, so getting $90,000 today is better than waiting a year for the full $100,000. 

So in the example above, I used the classic example of a cheese maker because some cheese need several months to age and mature before they are ready for consumption, so this creates a need for trade finance. I have just been to Venice on holiday and had to tell my partner the story of the Merchant of Venice when we were in the Jewish quarter: the whole story is too long to retell that story here (but I'll put a Youtube link below for those of you who are interested) but in those days, Italian merchants would send their ships out on long voyages to far away destinations to bring back exotic goods like spices, silks, tea, coffee, porcelain and other items that can be sold for a lot of money to the rich people and traders in Venice. So in this case, the merchant is taking a massive risk by sending a ship out to somewhere as far away as Mexico or West Africa - everything from bad weather to pirates to disease could threaten a successful mission. So what the trade finance experts in those days would do would be to strike a deal with the merchant: "when your ship returns to Venice in a year from now, it would be carrying about 10,000 ducats worth of exotic goods. That's a long time to wait, can you afford to wait that long for your money? What if I offered you 6,500 ducats up front right now, you will see the money before sunset today and you're then free to go do whatever you want with that money: spend it, invest it, buy a lovely new house, send more ships out to Africa, do whatever your heart desires. But when your ship finally comes back in a year, then I will own the 10,000 ducats worth of goods on board your ship." So that's how it works in a nutshell. 

What I am looking for thus

So that in essence is the very basic principle of how trade finance works: many people who get involved in this area of finance have to learn everything they need to know from scratch the moment they join a company involved in this kind of finance. There is no one size fits all approach to trade finance - once you understand the very basic principles, the rest is then learning about the specific functions of what your company does within the field of trade finance. What we're looking for in this case is someone who has proven that they can grasp new concepts very quickly and we're not so much expecting you to hit the ground running on day 1: that would be somewhat unfair and unrealistic. But we would expect you to get up to speed pretty quickly so you know what you're doing within a month or so, rather than still be lost and asking questions after 5 weeks. So if you have managed to do a degree in a complex subject at a very good university, then I would say, fair enough, you've proven to me that you're a fast learner because I know how difficult the syllabus is and even if you've studied something totally irrelevant to trade finance, it doesn't matter at all as I just want to know that you're the kind of person we can train with ease. But if you didn't go to a top university, no problem - just prove to me that you've been in a situation whereby you've had to learn some very complex concepts very quickly under pressure and that you were able to cope just fine under those circumstance. This can be experienced gleamed in the workplace, in your hobbies, perhaps you have done competitive sports - remember, a university is not the only place to prove to me that you're a truly brilliant genius. There are so many ways to prove how awesome you are beyond just getting a degree. 

But why do I have a gripe with people who do go to private universities? 

Well, I only have a gripe with people who have unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of how I am expected to 'respect' their degree from a private university. I have made it very clear on my blog: the reason why I have a problem with private universities is because of the very low entry standards, it seems like the key criteria is being able to pay the fees and beyond that, as long as you have some basic language and numeracy skills, you can start the course. Furthermore, I don't see the vast majority of the people from these universities flunking their courses: so either the teaching is so incredible that they are able to take the students with the very worst results and turn them into geniuses, or they simply lower the standards to the point where the vast majority of their students can get decent grades. Like many, I believe it is the latter because even if the teaching is excellent and the course content is similar to those from the top universities, you still can't essentially cure stupidity - your IQ is what you get at birth, no university in the world can raise it through teaching. That's why top universities like Oxford and Cambridge have an easy time producing loads of famous Nobel prize winners because they are already attracting the very best talents with the highest IQ to their universities already; whilst private universities still tend to attract only those who have well and truly messed up their studies and thus are left with no other choice but to settle for their last resort when they have truly run out of all other options. If you had great results (never mind great results, even mediocre, average results) for your A levels, would you willingly choose to go to a private university? No one in the right mind would do that if they could gain admission to a much better university. 

It's not SIM per se, it is bad attitude I can't deal with in the work environment. 

Rather than trying to find the 'perfect' applicant with the flawless CV, I want to find someone with a good working attitude. So what I am wary of are SIM graduates who get so defensive they go on the counter offensive (and boy have I encountered a lot of them on my blog) - they start attacking me, calling me elitist, defending the quality of the teaching at SIM whilst evading the basic issue that SIM only attracts those who have run out of options, that it is still the last resort for those who have royally fucked up their exams. All I want is an honest discussion about why they ended up in SIM in the first place before looking at other aspects of their work experience, that's all. By that very same token, I have also encountered Oxford graduates with equally bad attitudes: they think, "I'm an Oxford graduate, I'm amongst the very best of the best in the whole wide world, I'm smarter than all of you - I'm the smartest person in the building! So you're very lucky to have a brilliant genius like me work for your company, now treat me like the super star I am and bring me a cappuccino." Yes, there can be that kind of diva attitude associated with people like that, there's a massive sense of entitlement and they are unwilling to work as hard as the rest of the team. Hence I can't deal with people who are so defensive they are incapable of being honest, nor can I deal with people who are so entitled they are unwilling to be a team player. So please allow me to be clear on this point: I've got nothing against people from SIM, but I do have a problem with people who have an attitude problem the moment I try to ask any kind of questions about their experiences.

A matter of trust within the team

Look things can and will go wrong at work - we're all humans, we make mistakes: in fact, I had encountered a situation recently when one of the companies I dealt with made a silly mistake when processing some paperwork. The person who entered the trade into the system put the decimal point in the wrong place, now that's a classic example of human error. It happens, it's not like we're not careful, it's just that we're human after all. So when I make a mistake, I would firstly apologize for the mistake and take responsibility for it, then I would demonstrate to the team and my management that I have learnt my lessons and have taken steps to ensure that I would not make the same mistake again. Now I've come across a young man once who made a mistake at work - let's call him Joel (not his real name), the moment I confronted him about the mistake he tried to deny it: it wasn't me, someone else had handled that client, I wasn't responsible for that project. However, as I was very sure it was indeed Joel who had made the mistake, so I became the detective, found more evidence to the point where he couldn't deny it any longer: so I asked him, why did you lie to me? He said, "well, I thought if you found out I made the mistake, then I would get blamed and get sacked for fucking up like that. I'm still in my probation period and I don't want to lose my job over something like this." So I told him that I was ready to forgive an honest mistake, but to go out of his way and frame a colleague for it whilst lying to me about who was responsible for that mistake is actually far more serious than the mistake itself. I can't work with people whom are not honest, whom I can't trust. So you can see why I am wary of SIM graduates who get super defensive about their degree, instead of having an honest conversation about why they ended up in SIM in the first place. Okay, so you fucked up: nobody goes to SIM after they get straight As or even half decent results that's for sure - who are you trying to kid? Can we be honest?

I am not a heartless beast. 

Did I tell you that my best friend in the army totally fucked up his studies? There was a very sad story as to why it happened: his father was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer when my buddy was still in secondary school. He was the one who found his father's dead body when he came home from school, that whole episode traumatized him really badly during his O levels and so he ended up in a private school to do his A levels which he messed up as well as he was hanging out with the wrong company. With his grades, he could only get into a university in America which was not what I would consider respectable or reputable. Nonetheless, my army buddy is genuinely a really smart guy - he was simply totally messed up in his younger days and today, he has a brilliant career and is making a ton of money. In short, after he graduated and found a job he liked, he found a new purpose in his life and things improved a lot once he became motivated. Yes even successful people like my army buddy have had their share of mistakes in the past - there are times when circumstances are beyond our control and for crying out aloud, I had a really difficult childhood myself having grown up with extremely autistic parents. If anyone can offer empathy to those who have suffered a difficult childhood, I most certainly can. Perhaps the person who ended up in SIM really did have a story like my army buddy's - both my army buddy and I were awfully fucked up as teenagers as a result of our childhoods, yes I can be sympathetic but I do demand honesty in exchange for my sympathy. I most certainly didn't get any honesty from Joel and that's where I draw the line. I can't deal with dishonest people who are willing to lie and even attack me when they get very defensive.

I do have an applicant with an SIM degree!

Okay, I cannot divulge too much detail here as this is obviously confidential information but I do have a guy who applied and he didn't hide the fact that he had an SIM degree. However, he has since managed to prove himself in the working world by having held two jobs which were very demanding positions - thus having proven sufficiently that he has what it takes to survive out in the harsh working world, thus with all due respect and credit where credit is due: I am happy to consider his application and add his name to the shortlist. Thus let's imagine a hypothetical situation whereby I have this candidate versus an applicant with a degree from a good university like NUS, but the latter has far less practical work experience: whom would I choose then? This is a simple choice: I would definitely pick the candidate with far more relevant work experience. After all, the graduate from NUS has proven that he has the skills to do well in his A level exams - that was what earned him his place at NUS. Those skills are hardly going to be useful and relevant in the working world, thus I would definitely favour the applicant with more relevant work experience. After all, having a good degree from a reputable university doesn't ever guarantee that you will find a fantastic first job upon graduation - it merely increases the chances of it happening but so much is still up to the individual. It's like if you go jogging daily, yeah that would increase the chances of you losing weight - but a lot also depends on other things like how many calories you're consuming. Since I am not running a graduate recruitment programme, I am actually judging my applicants more on what they have achieved in the working world. So like I have said before, I do know of loads of brilliant Singaporean students who have really struggled in the working world as they failed to make the tricky transition from student life to working life.

Context is everything: nothing is absolute.

So let me tell you what surprised me about this applicant who has an SIM degree: I call it winning with a bad hand. In the game of poker, you have to play the cards you are dealt - it is easy to win when you are dealt good cards, it is still possible to win even if you are dealt a bad hand, but that then becomes a lot more difficult as the odds are stacked against you and it would thus take a lot of skill. It is easy to get a good job if you're armed with a degree from Oxford, but if you could score two respectable jobs in spite of having a degree from SIM, then I must say, this dude must be doing something right - that was enough to make me sit up and say, "okay, you have my attention. You definitely deserve at least an interview." You see, I used to have a kind granduncle (my grandmother's brother) who would buy me gifts and treats when I got good results in primary school - he couldn't speak English so he couldn't help me with my school work, but that was his way of encouraging me to study hard. Now I am not your kind granduncle, I'm not here to reward anyone for having studied hard and gotten good results - after all, choosing the right candidate for the job is a delicate task: you're not simply going to give the job to the candidate with the best results at school. Instead, I have to look at the journey that each applicant has taken to get to where they are today - indeed, if an Oxford graduate did the same two jobs that this SIM graduate after graduation, then I would question why he hasn't achieved a lot more given that he has an Oxford degree. And yes, I've even seen Oxford graduates who have achieved far less than me and thus nothing surprises me anymore. Hence in this case, context is everything - nothing is absolute when it comes to evaluating a CV.

Case study: Svetlana Khorkina of Russia

I want to be realistic here: it is completely unreasonable to expect the ideal candidate to have never ever failed an exam, never made a mistake, never put a foot wrong in their entire life. I have a really good analogy here to summarize my take on the issue: as a gymnast and a massive fan of the sport, I do follow it religiously and let's take one of my favourite gymnast Svetlana Khorkina of Russia as an example. At the 2004 Olympics, she made the uneven bars finals only to make a disastrous error during the routine, finishing in last place in that final. Was this a bad result? Yes it was. But if you were to look at her career spanning 1994 to 2004, she won a 7 Olympic medals (2 of which were gold) and 20 world championship medals (9 of which were gold). Even though she has long retired from the sport, she is still one of the living legends of gymnastics. So if even the great Khorkina from Russia can make mistakes at competition, it suffices to say that nobody is perfect: but does matter is that you do not let your failures define you. If I look at your CV and if I see is failure after failure without a single notable accomplishment, then oh dear, you really are a loser. But if I look at your CV and I see a mix of wins and fails (like Khorkina), sure sometimes you've made mistakes and had terrible results but as long as you have achieved some pretty awesome things along the way to impress the world, then I would be more than happy to focus on those achievements instead. After all, if I see someone who has never ever made a mistake or put a foot wrong, that actually sends out a message and it is not a good one: this person is so risk averse that he would never ever try to take himself out of his comfort zone and would never try anything challenging that might lead to failure.

Are you willing to leave your comfort zone?

So my regular readers will know that I took my sister, brother-in-law and nephew skiing back in January in Spain, my nephew actually picked up skiing pretty quickly much to my delight. Mind you, I was actually a pretty harsh and demanding coach. Did he fall? Yes he did and quite a lot, but here's the thing: there's no way you're going to improve if you don't take yourself out of your comfort zone. I knew that my nephew could ski down the easiest slope in the resort with ease, so I took him down two other slopes which were harder - they were steeper and narrower. Did he fall whilst trying to navigate those harder slopes? Of course he did, but that's how you improve. I am currently nursing a knee injury so I am taking it easy in my gymnastics training until it improves - my friends at the gym are surprised to know that I am injured because they're not seeing me fall during training. I had to explain that since I have pain in my right knee, I am not trying any of the difficult skills because I don't want to risk making the injury worse. When I stick to the easy skills, I am well within my comfort zone and not going to make mistakes - but when I am feeling 100% and am challenging myself to train more difficult skills, that's when I am going to fall a lot, when I am taking myself out of my comfort zone and pushing the limits of my physical abilities. That's when you will see me fall a lot but that's the only way to improve: if you're willing to leave your comfort zone and challenge yourself. So from that perspective, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having tried something that's totally out of your comfort zone and failing. I think it is wrong to try to hide anything that you' have failed at on your CV, seriously, I'm not expecting to see perfection - I want to see some character.

So there you go, since drafting this article yesterday, I have interviewed the candidate with the SIM degree today and have told him that I'm gladly passing him through to the next round on the basis of his impressive work experience. I am familiar with his previous employer and I know how demanding the work environment can be there, there was also an element of honesty about this candidate that I liked - at least I would feel comfortable trusting him and working with him in a team. This does of course boil down to social skills: it doesn't matter how smart you are or how brilliant your exam results may be, do you have the right kind of social skills to make another person feel comfortable and earn their trust during a job interview? Don't get me wrong, the fact that I have made that decision was mostly based on his good social skills (which reflected during his good performance during the interview) and his work experience (and the respect I have for his previous employer) - this still doesn't change the fact that he did fuck up his A levels for some reason and unfortunately ended up in SIM as a result. But I didn't even ask him for a sob story or 'valid excuse' for having done that badly for his A levels, I didn't need to know: he had done enough to convince me that he did badly for his A levels not because he was plain stupid, but there were other reasons (such as in the case of my army buddy). So there you go, that's it from me on this issue. Please let me know your thoughts and leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading!