In what division are soft skills most valued?
In what division are soft skills most valued?
I would consider myself a very good leader; I have a natural ability to deal with people and have a high EQ (emotional intelligence). I also have pretty good math/technical skills, but I'll never to able to compete with an MIT math major.
I have pretty much ruled out S&T since these days you have to be a genius quant to be a trader. I am considering IB, although I feel as if there is not as much room to stand out in IB with leadership qualities since much of the work starting out is grunt work and very technical.
I reckon I will be very good at navigating office politics, and being seen favorably by management. I was thinking of perhaps private banking/PWM? Not entirely sure where I could use my EQ to really flourish.
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You don't have to rush into being a "leader". The truth is you will learn after coming out of undergrad, that there are levels to that game, and that we are at the lowest of the low.
The best way to be a leader is to be on top of your work, do an amazing job, come to work on time, and you will be seen as someone that will have leading qualities.
Doesn’t matter if you showed good leadership skills/EQ or technical abilities at college—your mentality comes across as arrogant which is a problem in any finance role.
But yeah, don’t underestimate the need for soft skills in IBD.
Second this, you dont want to be the guy who goes to a party claiming he can drink 15 beers.... no one cares, and no one counts. Good leaders dont say "im a good leader", and if you ever said that off of a message board and in a work setting, no one will follow.
That being said, i wouldnt even think about leadership skills in your first year as youll be leading nothing. Stick to finding a job first, and one that fits what you want to do. Worry about the rest later
If you are going to rule out Sales (as opposed to prop trading, in which soft skill don't matter), do it b/c sales jobs are threatened by technology, not because it's too difficult quantitatively.
You're right that your soft/people skills won't matter much for the first ~5 years of your IB career (though they never hurt), but they will matter enormously if you stay on the path and become a coverage officer.
Soft skills.... Perhaps Pfizer has an opening in the Viagra division?
Leadership is extremely valuable at all levels, even as a first year. To say otherwise would reflect a very narrow definition of what leadership actually is.
It just looks different than what you may have thought a 'leader' looked like in college (i.e. someone who is President of a bunch of random clubs). As a first year you won't have any people under you to manage obviously but there are numerous ways you contribute and build your credibility as a future leader. For example, you can either be the Analyst who blindly processes comments or you can actively contribute to the content and message of your work product. The beauty of banking is that there is always so much to do and thus your Associates/VPs will greatly appreciate any Analyst taking a leadership role on putting together materials and ideas without them specifically telling them.
As you build credibility within the team with your work ethic, work product, and idea generation you will be recognized by other analysts and your superiors. I've definitely seen Analysts/Associates who are well respected enough to essentially command attention. People will listen to them when they talk and people will defer to their ideas regardless of level. This all takes time to build and it starts from the moment you hit the desk as a first year.
In any job (not just banking), title does not equal leader. As others have eluded to, leadership and respect is earned over time. Over time you'll get promotions and eventually you'll be directly managing Analysts/Associates but the best leaders will have earned the respect of their peers well before that.
Some sales jobs definitely fit the soft skills bill, ruling out S&T entirely seems like a bit much. Commodities being one example of a field where you need to be able to convince random industrial customers your hedging/financing structure makes sense.
Have you considered consulting? Consulting is like 60% soft skills, 30% project management and being able to catch onto things quickly and 10% of your actual skills towards your work. If you really consider soft skills to be your strength then there's no reason why you shouldn't consider consulting.
IB vs ECM soft skills (Originally Posted: 04/21/2011)
Everyone says that you need to have really good people skills and political skills to make the jump from associate to vp and beyond in IB. How about in ECM? How heavy is it on these skills?, at associate, VP, and beyond?
Thanks!
No, you will be still be marketing, pitching, building relationships etc.
I don't think it would be much different at all.
oh, is it? I always thought ECM was not a client-facing role. IT seemed like a support function to the IBD when they need to do pricing, and execution of IPOs. It seems quite different, and seemed like it wouldn't need as much awesome people skills even at the higher ranks. Could you guys confirm or correct me on this?
No, ECM is very client driven. You might not be talking to executives about mergers, but you will absolutely need relationships to help with IPO's, coordinate private placements, etc. If anything, you fall closer towards sales than traditional bankers.
You still see the same transition around the VP level from execution to client contact.
Hi
I found that a member asked same question in this forum some months ago.
Pls use search box to find this questions with comments
Hi! Could you point me to the post? I tried to no avail. Thanks!
And yeah, I was worried about it because I am not the most extroverted person around, but I've realized I'm just making it into too big a deal.
ECM is extremely client facing.
Anytime an industry banker is looking to pitch equity, he loops in his ECM banker who accompanies him to the pitch. If mandated, ECM generally executes the deal while the industry bankers manage the corporate relationship.
in other words, do you mean ECM isn't very client-oriented after all? they still need to have those people skills, don't they?
Once again it depends on banks. Some dont have any coverage group so the whole job (pitching & execution) is done by the ECM team. Sometimes, the m&a team does the pitching and Ecm executes. There's no universal answer to this.
Technicals or soft skills? (Originally Posted: 03/27/2013)
Assuming a person already possesses the required work ethic (and stamina) for a job in IBD, do you think working on one's soft skills is more important than knowledge of technicals?
And I'm not asking this for an interview setting, I am asking this as a general life/career question. Should you focus on learning as much as possible about different industries, accounting, etc. or try to focus on actually getting along with people better (becoming a better person)? Do people in the industry give more weight to your personality or performance (as it seems that the line might be blurred in a competitive field such as IB)?
Would love to hear your opinions on this...
Can I teach you technicals? Yes. Can I teach you how to have a conversation? No.
Do I want to teach you technical? No Do I want to talk to you? Probably not
JK. I agree with above mostly. Need to have some baseline knowledge, but you can't teach someone how to be a bro.
I agree with the above, but you need to be at a level of intelligence where you can understand and grasp the technical part.
Yes some parts of IB is very boring and repetitive, but a big portion of it is also problem solving. Your associate won't be there to hold your hand
Climbing the ladder is strongly correlated to interpersonal skills. Not to say technical knowledge isn't needed, but people liking you is pretty important for upward progression
Soft skills to succeed in the industry (Originally Posted: 06/05/2016)
You see a lot of threads on here about what classes to take, what you should read, what excel shortcuts are useful and generally a lot of stuff concerning technical skills or interview preparation, but I was wondering what soft skills people have found the most important and how they've developed them.
So, what soft skills and personality traits have you seen make people successful in investment banking and other areas of finance? Is there anything you were told that you needed to improve in a performance interview, and if you did manage to do better in this aspect, what did you start doing differently? Have you noticed anything outstanding in your colleagues, or even to the contrary, is there anything that stands out as being undesirable?
Networking
Can soft skills make up for lack of experience? (Originally Posted: 12/29/2012)
By that I mean "soft" skills such as cfa lv. 1, Wall St. excel modeling, Bloomberg cert., etc... All of my resume experience is in marketing and I have a mediocre gpa at the moment, 3.2, and I'm not at a target school. I also don't have enough time left in school to pursue a finance internship. I'm really not sure how to transition to finance without relevant experience outside of academia. I'm obviously not shooting for Wall Street, BB's, or anything like that. But I would like to get into investments such as stock trading eventually. I feel like 24 is too early to be SOL for my future career goals. However I realize I'm not nearly as qualified or as informed as many of my peers on this forum. What to do, what to do... Realizing ambitions later in life is kind of shitty.
My background is way worst than you. I don't have a glamorous gpa (shit gpa actually: 2.4), only one internship, no connections, no cfa level 1 (wrote it in Dec but still waiting for the results; meanwhile preparing for level 2), but I somehow landed an interview on an ER associate position. How I did that? I hacked. I hacked like hell to get the chance. When my friends were out there hanging out/drinking/dicking around, I was spending my time everyday in the cubicle at the school library (yeah I went there although I have already graduated recently and have no job currently) reading CFA L2 materials, trying to catch up to the equity valuations part so I can learn to write my own research reports. Besides, I also cold-emailed ER analysts and associates when I have questions, and few of them are helpful enough to answer them. At the end, I submitted my draft of the report along with my resume to one of the large Canadian ibank, and got a first round interview. Right now I'm waiting for the second round as well as interviews from other banks (if there are any).
Don't judge me with my GPA, I know I screwed it up hard. But I'm just doing what I believe to be right in this tough uphill battle. This is my 2 cents for you.
Thanks Tony! This definitely makes me feel better. Let me know how your interviews go and good luck!
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