Cathal O'Hare, Fund Accountant Supervisor, Hedgeserv

What is your name, job title and employer?

My name is Cathal O'Hare, I'm a Fund Accountant Supervisor and I work for a Hedgeserv.

What are the main tasks you do in your job in a normal week?

Basically, what we do on a daily basis is we review a cash and position reconciliations. These are carried out by fund accountants so they download the broker statements and then compare the broker statements to the Hedgeserv data and then it's our responsibility to review all that and make sure everything has been booked correctly in our system and ensure then that the daily calculations are sent out to the client and a timely and accurate manner.

What skills do you need to be successful in your role?

One of the main skills you need in this job will be time management as you're working to a lot of deadlines, daily weekly or monthly deadlines, so you need to be able to manage your time and your workload very well ensure that you meet these deadlines. Another skill you would need would be good organizational skills as you're going to be working on numerous different funds, so you need to be able to organize your workload on know which fund you're working on at that time and what needs to be done for that fund. You're going to need good numeracy skills as well as you're always going to be working with numbers. Having an interest in accountancy is going to be a great help too as that's basically what you're going to be doing most of the time.

What did you do as a student that has helped you in your career?

I was always interested through school. I always had a leg for mathematics, so I always knew further down the line I was going to go down the finance line and then once I done my A levels in school, I done Business Studies. One of the modules was accountancy in it also really had a good leg in it from there so from there I went to university and studied finance and it was always going to lead me back to a role in accountancy.

What advice would you give to a college student?

One of the main bits of advice I would give to my younger self when starting University would be to get involved as much as you can, get out of your comfort zone a bit and start joining up with clubs and stuff because through that you're going to be communicating with other people and you're going to be building that skill which is one of the main skills you need for the job, communicating with other people because even in any job the you're going to need to be a good communicator because you're communicating with your teammates and you're also going to have to communicate with clients.

How did you get into your job?

As soon as I graduated, I started looking for jobs and on the gradireland website I happened to stumble across Hedgeserv, seen it, read the job description thought it was very interesting. I sent my CV across to them and got grabbed for an interview went to the interview and then within a week or two I was offered the job and it was too good of an offer to turn down.

What do you love about your job?

My favourite thing about the job would have to be the people you work with. Everybody is sort of in the same age bracket so it's very easy to get along with everybody you're working with, its good craic in the office, it's a good atmosphere in the office. When you're working with people that you enjoy being with it's easy to get up and go to work in the morning because it's a good place to be.