Hello everybody,
I have noticed lately that many Financial Analyst positions in corporate finance require experience with SQL and sometimes relationship database software. I do not have any experience with it, but I understand it is used to pull/manipulate data by running queries. I have a few questions below:
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How exactly is SQL used in corporate finance? What type of assignments?
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Does anybody know of any online training courses I can take that teaches SQL in regards to work that is done in corporate finance?
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Does SQL come attached with database systems like Hyperion, Oracle ERP, SAP ERP, or Excel?
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In an interview what are solid examples to explain how I have used SQL in my past that would impress the interviewer?
In my position I run SQL queries from the companies database to pull information about clients or information I couldn't find in our accounting software package. I don't create any of the queries myself but it is defiantly helpful to know where to look if you need to change dates or try and pull a different field if you know how to see all the available fields in SQL table. Codeacademy.com has an entry level free class that will teach you the basics and after that its just playing around with it since as a finance analyst I doubt you will ever be expected to write any major queries yourself.
On a related note, how useful is Python? I'm in corp fin now and am interested in self teaching myself Python, and think it'd be useful for the job for the same reason SQL was mentioned above.
"I do not have any experience with it, but I understand it is used to pull/manipulate data by running queries."
"4. In an interview what are solid examples to explain how I have used SQL in my past that would impress the interviewer?"
Careful. SQL knowledge isn't something you can fake once you start working. In an interview, you're better off being honest and saying that you've never used SQL, but give them examples of how you've learned other software/systems and gotten up to speed quickly. There's a difference between fabricating your work experience and blatantly lying about your technical abilities.
So as a data scientist who works in the corp finance/BI part of the company and is a manager of the analytics team, I feel i can chime in on this.
SQL is a database language to ask a database (usually relational, but the SQL has been adapted to NoSQL databases) for data come back in a certain way. It's basically like the manual version of excel. Instead of just copy pasting, you have to tell the database to do what you did by hand in code.
The importance of SQL is the fact past 100k records, excel goes to shit. If you want to do any sort of analysis on the raw data at the millions or billions level without being dependent on someone fetching the cleaned data for you, you need to know SQL.
SQL does come with most finance software somewhere. If not, knowing what SQL is doing is beneficial in 1) understanding how to structure data regardless, 2) is a highly portable skill, 3) along with being a massive barrier to entry against excel jockeys, 4) and always in demand.
As for python, (or R and SAS for that matter), those are more analysis oriented software/programming langauges for running statistical/machine learning tasks. This is usually done to find relationships and patterns in the data by various means. They're kind of different part of the data analysis pipeline. While important, I would recommend learning SQL first since cleaning data is like 80% of the data analysis pipeline.
OP-do not try to impress an interviewer with knowledge of something that you don't actually understand/use. It is too easy for the interviewer to figure out you're lying. Instead, go get a book on SQL (O'Reilly's Head First SQL is a good starter) and teach yourself. In an interview if they ask you can explain that you took an interest in SQL and you've been learning on your own.
Yes it becomes mandatory to learn SQL for most of the corporate finances.
SQL / SAS in Corp Fin (Originally Posted: 07/02/2013)
Would be interested to hear everyone's perspectives on the use of SQL / SAS / Access in corporate finance functions. Is it necessary to do your job? What % of your work involves using one of the aforementioned databases? What industry do you work in? Thanks.
I started in finance in a pretty unique role, and became proficient in SQL, Access, SAS, VBA, and developing BI tools... That combined with being an expert in excel made me extremely employable in general... Once I had a strong background in these areas, I ended up using my skills at a startup in strategy, and then at a F100 in IT strategy...
Honestly though, knowing your way around databases and coding can only help you in the future. The more comfortable you are with big data, the more employable you are. This may not be as important in finance, but they are still good skills to develop early on, and build on during your career.
I agree... I didn't expect it would be that important but have realized that a lot of people who get ahead in finance (in my current role - f500 financial svcs) have a pretty good understanding of SQL, at a minimum. Often, these are the people who are looked to for analyses on large datasets and are identified as high performers. It wasn't as important in my last role, so I just wanted to get a sense of how it is at other f500 companies. Interested to hear more perspectives.
No one in my department uses it. We hire IT consultants to help us upload / input large data into the database and use programs (such as SAP/Oracle) to spew out the numbers we want. But I don't see how it can be a negative thing; at best it's neutral.
I am a econ/finance major currently going through my second F500 corporate finance internship, and in my experience programs like SAS/STATA were never used by finance departments; instead we used excel with add on's like Hyperion to do most of our analytics. The marketing department of the company i'm currently interning for does use SAS extensively, so it might be worthwhile to learn but certainly not necessary.
It certainly can't hurt. In my experience the barrier separating a good financial analyst from a good IT developer is very thin. If you can use VBA and SQL odds are you can do everything an analyst can do but better. Vice Versa, most of the really good analysts I know have a solid technical understanding of the finance systems we have and can and do transition easily to roles within our IT org.
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