Careers in Finance for MBA grads

                   

                   

The session on “Careers in Finance for MBA grads” by Mr.VijayaRaghavan on September 1, 2012 turned out to be a master class in Finance for me, Aarathy Jayakrishnan . Being a Finance aspirant, it helped me get a clear picture of Finance and its various divisions. During the session Mr.Vijayaraghavan explained Corporate finance, Financial services and Investment services in very simple terms. Corporate finance includes Investment and Financial functions which deal with obtaining money for investment. Financial services comprise Commercial banking which is essentially sourcing and deploying merchant banking which involves broking and Consulting. A valuable tip given by him was to identify one’s industry of interest and start accumulating knowledge in it through the reading of newspapers and business journals. He assured us that doing so would help us develop our domain knowledge to a great extent and improve our performance during the time of recruitment. He also addressed the problem of MBA graduates finding it difficult to get into corporate finance and gave us a few suggestions on how to tackle it effectively. These included the need for high level of personal ethics, passion for numbers, attention to details, ability to acquire and soak information, a total understanding of the global market, the ability to network with bankers, peers and detect frauds. A very interesting fact which came up during the session was that Engineers and mathematicians have contributed the most to the field of Finance. Through this fact, he assured us that our UG background is immaterial and that analytical skills, problem solving skills and common sense are all that mattered. He also emphasized on the importance of pursuing high level certifications like CFA along with our MBA’s, which would open the doors of Corporate finance for us. On the whole, I feel that we, as first years, are lucky to attend this session which gave us a complete overview of finance at such an early stage of our course.    
  
                                                                              By Aarathy Jayakrishnan (Team Colloquia Member)