Careers in financial services

Black Collegian, Oct 1996 by Chapelle, Tony

Got the urge to work with a diversified financial group? Then take finance courses in college, of course, but also throw in . . . computer science.

Want to make it as a high-powered management consultant? Believe it or not, you may want to start as a financial analyst.

And the banking industry is looking for professionals who are great consumer marketing people.

The fall 1996 school year is just underway. But it's already time to start planning for graduation, or at least for your senior year. By then, where will you find a job in banking, insurance, or the securities industries?

There are plenty of tried-and-true methods for getting yourself together for the job hunt, but there are some surprises too! Let's check out the job prospects for the Black collegian who's about to enter the financial service business

The Consulting Route

The corporate world has long looked for professionals who could give advice, including financial advice. The total figure of these consultants now exceeds 80,000, according to Business Week, "from partners at elite global firms with offices around the world to displaced executive's with fax machines in their basements."

Companies such as Ernst & Young, Arthur Anderson, Mercer Management, and McKinsey & Company provide companies with more than tax advice. They also help with the nuts-and-bolts of how to do everything from pulling off corporate mergers to turning around companies heading nowhere. That's why expert consultants are sometimes chosen to leave that business and go straight to the boardrooms of the companies they used to advise.

"There's no doubt that individuals have historically used firms like ours as a training ground," says John Nixon, the director of human resources for the Financial Advisory Services Group at Ernst & Young. "Undergrads come to firms like ours where they get training which is as good as it gets. That's often used as a springboard."

Nixon says that the hottest jobs in his niche this year are as financial analysts. Financial analysts look at a variety of financial indicators to determine the market worth of companies, or to find out what's causing trouble in a company. Among other indicators, they look at cash flow, and market position. But, Nixon says they'll be exposed to a broader variety of assignments and problems than those of the typical commercial or investment bank or corporation.

Starting salaries begin in the low30's, and go through the 40's, Nixon says. He looks for students who have demonstrated academic excellence and have graduated in the top 25% of their classes. But equally important is to find a student who's been able to balance schoolwork with "a fuller life," including community work, volunteering athletics, and belonging to an academic society.

Nixon is recruiting at universities that he identifies as the Top 20 in the country.

Diversified Financial Services As we approach the 21st Century, there will be a bigger blur between companies that used to do just, say, investing, and companies that do that and a host of other financial transactions.

Diversified financial services companies offer consumers and corporations a variety of products. The Principal Financial Group, for example, has mortgages, pensions, group and individual life and health insurance, and mutual funds. NOVUS Services Corporation runs several credit card brands including the Discover Card, and also provides home, and car loans.

But this year, according to recruiters, "techies" are in big demand. Yvonne Burns, a technical recruiter at NOVUS, in Riverwoods, Illinois, says, "The majors that I've seen coming into the market are finance majors, accounting, marketing, computer engineering, and math with a statistics background.

"But we have a particularly big demand for computer people." At NOVUS, hiring "is definitely up" because the company has exploded into new products. Therefore, company recruiters are visiting more campuses, namely in the Big Ten, and at Black colleges, which Burns says, "have students whose technical skills...are some of the best." Her company hires both grads and undergrads.

To Gordon Welton, the placement manager of Principal Financial, the very hottest job titles are programmers, and systems analysts. "We're becoming a more technologicallydriven society. People who have technical skill sets-especially combinations like accounting and Management Info Systems (MIS), or finance and MIS-will be especially strong. Those combinations will give them an appreciation and the technical ability to understand the finance industry customers they're dealing with."

Welton said that he was hiring more of these professionals than in the past, but that he didn't see companies like his doing more hiring of the other job types-pension administrators, accountants, securities analysts, and underwriters-that make up the biggest entry-level categories for college students.

"We always need to replace talent lost to attrition. But we won't be increasing our numbers," Welton said.

Each fall and spring, his company generally recruits at 40 college campuses. These include historicallyBlack schools such as Howard, Jackson State, Southern. and Dillard, as well as Big Ten schools near Iowa. Most new hires actually come from these visits, while only 10% come from referrals. The rest come from applicants, and advertisement respondents.