Recent Hamilton graduate Noah Bishop ’11 will soon begin a job in the offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Stamford, Conn. Bishop, who graduated with a degree in philosophy and economics, will be working in financial analysis.
RBS is a British banking and insurance holding corporation. Bishop will be working at the recently opened RBS office in Stamford, the headquarters from which RBS handles all operations in North and South America. Bishop’s position with RBS is that of financial analyst working in the transaction and portfolio management section of the bank, which is part of a coverage group. He will be spending most of his time performing tasks related to corporate lending. Bishop was hired into a two-year program, after which he can presumably leave the bank, or stay on if they choose to extend him a further offer.
Graduating from Hamilton with a double major in philosophy and economics, Bishop says that neither of his two majors fits in perfectly with his career plans; he says that he seldom made academic decisions at Hamilton based upon a particular career consideration. His interests in philosophy and economics both stem from classes that he took and enjoyed during his first semester at Hamilton in the fall of 2007. He finally decided to major in economics during his sophomore year, but says that the decision was not directly related to his plans to go into finance; “The two decisions sort of happened concurrently,” Bishop said, “but without any real causation between the two.”
Bishop’s first experience working in finance was in the summer of 2009, when he was offered an internship at the global financial services firm, UBS. Through close work with Director of the Career Center Kino Ruth, Bishop was put in touch with Hamilton alumnus and RBS employee Grover Fitch ’82, from whom Bishop eventually got an internship offer. He worked that summer with RBS and was offered a full-time, post-graduate position at the end of the summer.
Bishop emphasizes how helpful Ruth and the Career Center were for him in terms of creating an impressive résumé that would stand out to employers amidst stacks of others from recent college grads from around the country. “They are good at giving people the tools they can go about getting a job with,” he said. “I would say that this is their biggest strength. They know how these things should be written and structured so that people like them. I've gotten a lot of compliments on my resume because of what Kino and I worked on together.”
Bishop also notes the importance of his involvement with the Mock Trial Team, of which he was twice captain. While his experience with Mock Trial was not directly related to his job search, he says it always gave him something interesting to talk about during interviews.
As of this summer Bishop has not made any concrete plans for the long term but is considering pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy.
Bishop is a graduate of Summit High School in New Jersey.
