I currently am working for Bank of America (BofA) as a teller, and it’s been 2 months now. A little bit about what I am, I am an international student whose first language is not English. When I graduated from college, I didn’t do any internship and had no remotely related experience to banking industry. I was full of disadvantages. BofA’s website clearly stated that they wouldn’t typically hire and sponsor F1-visa students, and, on top of everything, the economy was painfully lagging.
One cannot help but wonder why in the world they would hire someone like me while millions of Americans were being unemployed. That’s why I really think that I should share my story, and that my story might be somewhat beneficial for some of you who are now reading it.
The first and foremost reason was because I was interested in BofA deeply. When I was in my junior year, I was reading my Marketing textbook. The featured story of chapter 8 was about Bank of America, the history of the company, how as a tiny local bank they surpassed many competitors and became the current largest holding bank in the world, and how BofA is one of the best places to work for. I said to myself, “this company is great, and I will try to get in there!”
You certainly can stop reading this post right here, because I have shared with you what probably the only thing that matters most. As an applicant, I had nothing, and the only thing that made me stand a chance in the competition was that I was interested in the company the most, that I was the most passionate among the applicants. This is basically the key to success: Love what you do, and do what you love. If you truly love to work for Bank of America, then go for it.
If you choose to continue reading my post, I’ll also be very delighted, because now I am sharing about what I did with that passion. Actually when you truly desire something, you’d want to learn more about it, and things would be so much obvious beyond this point. In any industry, you got to be a “grunt” first, so aiming for the teller position was reasonable. Then of course I would have to find out what it would take to be a good teller. A teller has to be good at customer service (mostly) and sales (sales skills are important for so many things in life). So how did I achieve these two skills, I took part time jobs. During my three and a half years in college, I served food and cleaned things in a buffet restaurant, processed barcodes and maintained an inventory in a library, sat at a reception desk, kept track of other people’s documents in a school office, and gave tours around campus to groups of new students.
How do these help at all, you say? I saw the benefits of each job when I took it: giving tours helps me present things better; filing and barcoding helps me become detail-oriented and also better with long numbers; serving food and cleaning stuffs teach me endurance and customer service; and sitting at the desk makes me know by heart of how much each roll of coins worth. Even though I had no related experience with banking industry when I applied, these “trivial” jobs made me fully ready to absorb whatever it would take to do a good job. So to be prepared is essential. The hiring process was about two weeks, but my success was constructed many months before. No experience is irrelevant at all, really. If you see something that can help you to get closer to your goal and is relatively easy, then it’s great! Do it!
The third important reason for me to get chosen is that I was lucky the entire time. I was called for the interview at the right time, had the right interviewers and the right competitors, enjoyed the right questions and answers… The weather itself was right, too. On the day I had my last interview with the branch manager, at the last moment there was some problem with the street address. I tried to calm down, walked to the nearest computer and looked up the address for the destination. The bus came and took me away, and I arrived at the interview 10 minutes early. I was blessed.
I truly believe that humans can only try so hard, and in every success lies some sort of luck. One can try to prepare so well, yet his very ability to be able to think, move, and act is already a very great blessing. I didn’t have a car, but I was lucky enough to be able to run to the bus: a person on wheelchair might not make it to the interview like I did. We don’t really control our luck, but I do believe that each of us has our own kind of luck, and what we can do is to appreciate and utilize it.
So it is it, then. There was no secret to it: I found out what I liked to do; I prepared; and I was lucky. Guess what? The title of this post should instead be “How DK becomes a teller for Bank of America”, since it’s mostly about my personal experiences and thoughts. But guess what? This can also be “How one can become successful in so many things in Life.” Yes, I do believe that Passion, Preparation, and Providence are important as much.
