What's your job about?

Gallagher is one of the world’s leading insurance broking houses, and as a graduate within the company our job first and foremost is to learn. Within my experience of the Gallagher Graduate program, I’ve been placed in various teams that deal with corporate clients developing and advising clients the best practices in handling their risk / insurance needs.

While at some points it does feel like you are back at uni reading articles and writing reports, the Gallagher graduate program has a good mix of both the physical elements of a traineeship and the knowledge elements of university. Any one day can include writing a recommendation report for a corporate client on their risk management needs with advice from professionals who’ve worked in the industry for longer than you’ve been alive to meeting underwriters (acting on behalf of insurance providers) and both engaging and observing discussions to further build or develop relationships that benefit the clients we work for.

Like most, the only real knowledge of insurance I had getting into the industry was doing that of my cars each year, and like most I would go with whoever’s the cheapest and pay my money and hopefully get to forget about it for the next 12 months until it was time to do it all again. Gallagher has opened my eyes to the very necessary and important field of insurance for major corporations, whether it be something that’s required of them by law or something that is their to protect them against and unforeseen event.

What's your background?

I grew up on the North Side of Brisbane where I went to the local primary school, at the age of 10 I was enrolled in a private boy’s school in South Bank with around 1500 students, it was a challenge to adjust but one I rather enjoyed. After completing my secondary education, I enrolled in the University of Queensland doing a bachelor’s in business and science. Very quickly I realised that science wasn’t for me and made my way through a business degree.

After going straight out of high school and doing 2.5 years at uni I was starting to feel burnt out with education. Much to my parents concern I decided to defer my studies for 6 months and just work, travel, and ultimately refresh myself for the final stages of my degree. It was at this point I again found a passion for economics, something I had previously enjoyed in the final years of high school. While this added an extra 2 years onto my degree it was definitely a great experience both meeting new people and again finding a passion for learning.

During university I was working in the hospitality industry in various locations around the Brisbane CBD, giving me the opportunity to meet some amazing people and allow me to have a flexible schedule that didn’t interfere with university and travel when I wanted to. Getting to travel through both China and the Philippines were some amazing experiences with vastly different cultures which definitely gave me an appreciation for life I wouldn’t have had without those experiences (and would definitely recommend…)

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Someone with a different background could definitely do this job, working as insurance broker requires two main skills:

• Attentiveness
• Comfortable forming and maintaining relationships

Being attentive, you will understand what it is insurance brokers do…whether its looking at what’s been done in the past, listening to your more experienced co-workers on their thoughts about strategy, or reading the plethora of media sources that talk about industry trends and the evolving markets.

At the end of the day it’s a relations game, whether it be clients or insurers, having a good relationship with people will never be a weakness in the business, while a bad one can definitely hurt your career.

So long as you’re comfortable around people and enjoy the industry enough to want to learn about, I don’t see any reason for anyone to not be able to do my job.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

Don’t get me wrong there is some perks to working in a corporate job, whether it be meeting people you see on tv, getting taken out to lunch and going to events, but personally, the coolest thing I find in my job is getting to see the real-world application of it. Waking up and turning on the news and seeing things that will affect your clients and then getting to discuss how best to deal with this in a meeting. Call me crazy but getting into that go mode is a pretty good feeling in the morning.

But yeah sales answer, companies love to show off that they have graduates, you get taken to pretty cool places and shown off by your bosses for simply completing a degree, so take full advantage of that perk.

What are the limitations of your job?

I don’t like the word limitation so I’m going to change the question to hardest adjustment in your job, hope that’s fine. Moving into my first full-time corporate style job, the hardest adjustment was overcoming mental exhaustion.

From previous jobs I’d been physically exhausted, but during the first 6 months being mentally focused for the full workday and then also learning to wind down after was a difficult learning experience. This came to a peak with my first EOFY, where the 3 weeks leading up to the end of month, I found myself already tired going to work every day, you then must find a way to progress through everything so not to increase the workload for the next day (coffee becomes a big part of your day during this time). During this period, I also found it incredibly hard to “switch-off” at night as deadlines getting closer meant the work oftentimes came home even if you weren’t physically working on something. Finding an activity that you can signify as the end-of-the-day became crucial to maintain sanity at points.

Saying that, colleagues were a great help in helping you adjust (and thankfully I had a great boss at this time who helped me during this period), and you learn a lot about yourself. It does get easier, so enjoy the ride.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

Don’t knock something before you give it a go

• I often find myself looking back and thinking how much I would have hated the idea of my biggest passions nowadays 5 years ago.
• If someone asks you to do an activity, give it a go, you might just find something new you love doing

Enjoy the journey

• You’re going to face lots of challenges throughout your life, enjoy what you learn from each one of these
• You’re going to make mistakes, don’t worry too much about them, figure out what you would have done differently and put that into action moving forward.

Celebrate the small things

• I know it is easy to look at long-term goals and notice how far it feels like you are away from them
• Remember you have small wins each day, don’t forget to enjoy them as well. It’ll make those long-term goals a lot more surmountable