In 1993, the PBS program that I was working on was cancelled, and I needed a job.
I went to a temp agency that told me to go down to 222 Broadway to Barclays Swaps & Options and fill in for the receptionist for three days, $7.50/hour, and three days turned into a twenty plus year career.
I worked at Barclays for five years, in their derivatives back office area, eventually in their cash reconcilement area – manually reconciling cash payments and settlements, with paper and pencil!
In 1998, I was hired by SmartStream Technologies to implement reconciliation systems for banks and other large financial institutions that did stock trading and cash movement. The system I implemented would keep track of cash and stock movement in various accounts – making sure that what should have happened actually happened. It was very detailed-oriented, and often intense work. I travelled throughout the US and Canada implementing reconciliation software, and project managing teams of people.
This job required the following skills:
- Feed and data analysis
- Business analysis
- Understanding their daily workflow
- Matching logic, including Rules logic
- Creating relational database tables
- Creating the User Interface
- Working with users in Report Creation
- Implementation of the software itself
- Managing User Acceptance testing
- Maintaining Issues Logs
- Project Management – updating project management software
- Budgeted vs Actual cost comparisons
- Training users
- Documentation of procedures.
In 2014, I was asked by a small Ireland-based compliance software company to set up a customer support and implementation center in Hudson. I set up an office, hired staff, and now there are five individuals in Hudson (all Hudson residents), who have professional jobs with an excellent benefit package.