Lynnet Akech: Using Customer Service Skills to Transition Between Jobs (Investment Specialist at TD)

foreign ette we're so excited to have you on today's episode and to learn more about your career Journey so thank you for being here it's lovely to meet you I'm going to jump right into our first question for you today Lynette so we're intrigued by your journey and your professional growth let's start from the very beginning how did your experiences pave the way to your present position and lead you to where you are today thanks so much Sophie for having me today I'm more than happy to like again share my career experiences so my journey

I'd say begin in 2014 so I came to Canada in 2014 after finishing my high school in Kenya I went to UBC here in Vancouver I was able to get a full scholarship at UBC I did the economics so my background is I have a bachelor of Art in economics and my degree just allowed me to explore options because when you do economics it's not specific to a specific industry unless you decide to do a master's in economics and then you know becoming an economist but just a battle of arts and economics doesn't give you

the title of an economist so I did different courses in school I also did some business classes so I think my degree kind of just allowed me to explore just learn as much as I could and then after college that's when the career Journey began that's when I was like okay now I need to find out exactly what am I passionate about I knew I wanted to get into Finance but I didn't know exactly what when fun as I wanted to get into I think my college experience has really helped in terms of getting you

know getting my resume seen having that college degree from UBC I think it really intrigues employers so that I shaped my experience within my career yeah definitely I can imagine that a bachelor of Economics leads to a lot of different things so it's really interesting to see where that took you post-secondary and led you to your current role so reflecting more on that how does your journey differ from your initial expectations did you always anticipate pursuing this specific career path or did your Ambitions evolve along the way in your post-secondary experience I'd say that my

ambitions have evolved the last five years because I did graduate in 2018 so it's been like almost five years now time goes by so quickly I knew that I wanted to get into the finance industry I didn't know exactly where in finance industry I wanted to get into my first job actually after college was in a fintech company so Financial technology company was a startup in Vancouver I took the job because I was like okay it does align with my goalie I love talking about money I love you know helping other people understand money so

my first job was in a fintech company I was doing customer service basically I wasn't doing any Finance but giving a financial product to Consumers but I was more of like the customer service person I wasn't a financial analyst or anything but those experience over time is what has allowed me to now get into my position as an investment advisor at TD I knew what my goal was I took every opportunity that came my way hoping that it's going to lead me to my my goal of being in the finance industry and now banking because

I'm in the bank definitely yeah it's nice to know that your goals sort of ended up being very similar to what you achieved and that you must be very proud of that so you've also achieved success in a variety of roles from being a residence advisor at UBC a customer success specialist at instant Financial member services administrator at doctors of BC a financial advisor at CIBC and to finally your current role serving as an investment specialist at TD so all that being said could you share how you manage to transition from one role to the

next and how you knew that you were ready for the change yeah I know my resume looks like it's a long list I just feels that I've been changing companies a lot because I've only been working for five years now since 2018 so in terms of being able to transition my first job I wasn't successful at that job so I ended up getting laid off so I didn't leave on my own accord but again leaving that web allowed me to transition and get another job working as an administrator for doctors of PC basically I'd say

it's a bit of admin work and also still customer service I love to talk to people and so I think working as a residence advisor is all about people what I've realized in my career is that every job that I've had as hard interacting with people so relationship management as an advisor interact like students on campus as a customer success specialist you you know doing customer service and you need to talk about the company's product to the customers and now I also worked with doctors similar thing like I was doing customer service and everything in

my career I think the one thing that stands out is that my customer service skills and my relationship management skills has been the Catalyst of the change I think I used my customer service skills to get the next role and in your career you want to be moving up and up and now working in banking I still use my skills that I learned as a residence advisor in my banking because again having a career is all about people and I think that's the skill that I've honed over the last five years to allow me to

transition from one row to the next transitioning to banking was always the goal for me so I knew I was ready to leave my job at doctors obesity for example to go into banking because that was always my dream so it was just like me walking towards that and I'm happy that I did that and that's what I'm doing right now it's nice that you've drawn those parallels between all of those different roles and that you've used what you were passionate about to move on to the next thing so that's really great insight there we're

curious to know what inspires and propels you during your day-to-day responsibilities as an investment specialist at TD and I'm wondering if there's similarities between those roles and sources of motivations that you've experienced as well as that customer service aspect that you mentioned in terms of my current orderly propelled me is that a curious mindset so I grew up in Kenya most of my life I came to Canada when I was 18 but the one thing that has allowed me to move from one step to another is just my curiosity and so now I was an

investment specialist my job is to give Financial advice to to customers to Canadians and when you want to give Financial advice I think my strategy is always to understand what's the customer's pain point so that's where the Curiosity comes in okay so I meet her clients and I'm like what are you short-term and long-term goals in terms of your money it's not about recommending a product I think for me it's always about being curious about the person that's in front of me and then from that Curiosity I want to now solve the problem having a

degree in economics kind of allows you to be a problem solver and also just naturally a curious person and that allows me to want to know more people want to talk to people every day it can be draining I'm not going to lie because you know it's you're talking people's problem every day but I think I've learned how to how to live work at work and when I go home I'm able to like you know do other things what propels me every day is just meeting people I meet so many people they have so many

interesting stories I love talking to people I'm a curious person so just like people they motivate me and just knowing that I've helped someone buy a house for my advice as a lot of someone to pay for their kids education I think that the Journey of meeting people and working with them towards a dream really just it excites me and allows me to enjoy my job yeah definitely I can see how that aspect of helping people would really motivate one in their current role and I like that you also mentioned curiosity a lot I think

that's a really important trait to encourage young people to explore especially with their career which is a lot of our listeners for this podcast so I like that this all ties into curiosity so that answers the last question and we have one more question for you today Lynette it can be a little bit difficult to answer but I think it's a really important question to touch on so if given the opportunity what's something that you feel you would have done differently in your career path or what advice do you wish that someone had given to

you at a young age the one thing I wish I did do was do internships so I didn't do any internships in college you know when I was in Canada just because I didn't realize how important it was I think when I was in college I was focusing on getting my education and then as a student you can be so shielded from what happens outside of your college but then at the same time I think knowing that I didn't have that internship allowed me to now realize that I needed to walk twice as hard to

be able to get a job things will have been easy but I'm happy that it allowed me to realize how important whatever you do matters when you're in college think about where am I in college like what am I trying to achieve when you're young it can be so difficult I mean I'm still young it can be so difficult to plan out your entire career but I think the advice that gives someone at a young age is be curious try things you know apply for those jobs even if you're not that qualified you don't have

to have everything figured out put yourself out there go to networking events because that I was able to get my job in my first role in banking I went to a networking event I talked to someone I was out there and they believe in me and give me an opportunity go out there network network network talk to people because then that's how you open those for yourself that'll be my advice yeah that's amazing I think it's a really important thing to be able to give youth on the listeners of this podcast it's a difficult to

navigate time for most of them I'm sure so I'm sure that will really help a lot of them so thank you for sharing that and that's our last question for you today as I said I'm sure listeners will really benefit from all of your career insights and we really appreciate your time thank you so much [Music]