Sam Woods

I’m Sam, and this is my story.

I love doing a deal – closing a deal is one of the best feelings in the world. There’s so much work involved, such long hours and a lot of stress, so when you get a deal over the line there’s a huge wave of relief and you can’t beat the rush you get from that.

Working in corporate banking sounds technical, and there is that element to it, but it’s also all about people and relationships. I work with larger businesses, let’s say organisations with a turnover of more than £6.5m, and essentially my job is to be the bridge between the bank and the client. More than anything, it’s about making sure clients are happy.

I chose NTU because everything I heard about it was so positive.

My mum had always worked in a bank, and I did a gap year before university where I worked in branch for a building society. My mum was a single parent, and growing up we didn’t have a lot. To be honest, I think I wanted a career where I had the potential to earn a lot of money, and finance offered that.

I was the first in my family to go to university, and my mum was really nervous that taking a gap year would mean that I’d stop pursuing higher education. But I was determined – I saved up because I knew she wouldn’t be able to support me financially while I studied, so taking that year out really allowed me to save as hard as possible.

NTU’s marketing really stood out to me when I was at college, and I had a friend who was studying here who showed me around and told me all about student life. That really brought the experience to life, and then I came to an open day and that just cemented my decision. I even bought an NTU hoodie!

My university experience was a lot of fun.

I’m naturally quite introverted, and going to university – living on your own and making new friends from scratch – felt like it would be really intimidating. But actually it was super easy. You learn a lot about yourself very quickly in that environment, and I had a so much fun. Nottingham is a great city to be young in. The nightlife is incredible – that was something I definitely took advantage of.

I remember having the option to do a work placement as part of my course, but I chose not to because I felt like I’d already worked and done that, you know? I really hadn’t thought much about my life beyond graduation, and in a weird way, it’s only by chance I ended up in banking.

One day I was running late for a lecture, and I ended up going to the wrong room and accidentally attending a Barclays Corporate presentation about their summer internship and graduate programme scheme. I realised I wasn’t meant to be there and made my escape, but on the way out they handed me a flyer. That night I found the flyer in the bottom of my bag, and thought why not?

After graduating I realised how inaccessible a career in banking can be.

When I started that graduate scheme I was the only person out of 125 that had come from a polytechnic university. We all lived together for a month as part of the scheme, and day-to-day people were asking ‘Oh, where do you ski? Where do you summer?’, and at that point I’d been abroad about twice in my life. But for a long time I felt I had to pretend to fit in, so I would Google places to ski and wines and stuff, just to keep up with the conversation.

I was a few years into my career before I thought ‘why am I ashamed of who I am?’ I’m in the same position as these people, we have the same job. So now I’m very open about the fact that I didn’t grow up with much money, that I’ve had to fight to get to where I am. I do a lot of work now with things like the 93% Club, which is all about helping young people who don’t have those sort of connections to get access to the same quality of opportunity. I’m still involved with NTU and Nottingham Business School too, where I’m part of the advisory board – it’s so nice to be able to give something back because I took a lot from my time there.

The best advice I could give is never undersell yourself.

I think it’s really important to find people who will champion you. I’ve been lucky in my career to find a few people who have been incredibly supportive. Make the most of every opportunity that comes your way too, even if it’s something that you don’t think is that relevant. Just be curious about everything, and never sell yourself short.

I speak to a lot of young people through my work in widening participation programmes, and I often hear things like ‘I want to work in finance, but I’ve got no experience, I work in a garden centre.’ And I’ll always tell them that’s great, that means you can talk to people, you can connect with people from a different demographic to you, you can organise, and actually as a recruiter, these are the things that stand out. It’s all about working out what skills you have and how they can support your future career, because absolutely everyone has something to offer.