When Applying For a Financial analyst Position, What Skills Should You Have?
Depending on your career plan, resources, specialization choices, and eligibility choose your certification. These have different prerequisites in terms of educational background, experience, and examinations taken to be finally added on to your resume. All of them provide you with a well-defined skill set meant to ensure you are industry ready and have the required skill sets. Let us explore some areas.
Education
A graduation degree or even a Master’s in Finance goes a long way. Add certifications that are relevant like the CFA from the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute. Those from a non-financial background can do an MBA and take a course on financial analysis as these courses offer boot camps to bring you to speed. Analysts aspiring to work in securities should take their Series 63 and Series 7 exams to be ready for any suitable position.
Non-transferable skills will also need to be developed and aligned with the enterprise's needs. You must have the following traits.
- Interpersonal Communication skills
- Ability to solve problems creatively.
- Collaborative team skills
- Ability to work with ambiguity, pressure, and demands from the startup environment.
- Discipline and integrity since you will be working on financial transactions.
- A good learner as there may be no prior standards in financial interpretations.Experience
Most financial analysts gain employment as soon they finish their CFA certification or an MBA from a reputed university. However, other than education and the skills above you will need luck. That’s all. Ignore the payouts and work diligently. In a few years, you will be successful and climb the ladder of success. The payouts get more handsome as time moves on. And the scope is limited solely by you. The industry demands for good Financial Analysts have always been short of supply and have and will never end.Skill sets:
A Financial analyst has to have a gamut of traits besides training which can be acquired through online refresher courses and extensive research. The importance of continued learning can never be stressed enough. Once you have your skills in place and your certification to validate you are industry-ready, act on taking your skills to the next level.The skills of a financial analyst might include:
• Financial modelling: The modern Financial analysts must be excellent at presenting financial issues in modelling form such as through models like the Sortino Ratio.• Financial analysis: This is what the job role demands most from you. You can do accredited online or regular courses to equip yourself. Get certification from CFA under your belt.
• Data analysis: Digital data today and especially in this field involves Big Data and Deep Learning tools. You will need to update your technical skills to include DevOps, SQL, Python, R etc.
• Marketing skills: This is one non-transferable skill that you learn from experiential learning. Do a course to stay abreast of the latest technological trends to help reduce your work burden in advisory or forecasting roles.
• ERP systems: To effectively manage the back-end offices and for automation, you need to be fluent in ERP systems.
• Strategic thinking: Get creative, and innovative and rely on your own innate skills to develop this invaluable trait you cannot learn from college.
• Decision-making: The financial analyst services and advise others on making investment decisions. Your acumen needs to be sharp and abilities in decision making clear, precise and data-based when making your presentations.
• Thought skills: Your head has to be your best ally as you make those calculations and wade through complex equations while landing on your Agile feet at all times. What better way than extensive reading, discipline training and building a hobby to keep you in the developing mode.
• Attention to detail: Even a tiny mistake on the part of a Financial Analyst will never be tolerated and has a cascading effect on the firm, investors, and profit. No one but you can help yourself! Decide wisely because the Financial Analyst role is definitely not for everyone.
