FEATURES: BANKING AND INVESTMENT
UNIQUE SKILLS INVESTMENT BANKS WANT Loyalty, diplomacy and gravitas. You’ll need to show more than boring old “teamwork” and “communication” skills if you want to nab a graduate scheme in investment banking and management. How to prove it “Tell us about a time when you demonstrated your intellectual ability.”
Intellect
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et’s face it: Everyone thinks they have “good communication skills,” are “team players,” or are “effective problem solvers.” Just take a peek at your friends’ resumes if you don’t believe us. Don’t expect to stand out in the eyes of investment recruiters if you just focus on those old clichés! Investment banks and investment management companies have demanding checklists of skills they look out for in candidates applying for their graduate or internship schemes. On top of that, each firm also seeks unique traits in candidates that match their corporate culture. If you have a specific investment employer in mind and want to catch their attention, you’ll need to know some of the unique skills they are looking for, and know how to prove you’ve got them.
86 | gradsingapore Finance Career Guide 2020
It goes without saying that investment employers place a lot of emphasis on hiring bright candidates. But what specific intellectual skills are their recruiters actually looking for? Jane Clark, head of campus recruitment (Europe and Asia) at Barclays, says that Barclays seeks candidates who can grasp new concepts quickly. “People strong in learning agility are sharp and thrive in new and difficult situations. Grasping and learning new concepts quickly – whether it is a task, assimilating new information or data, managing a project, or meeting a new client – is important when working in an industry such as investment banking,” she said. “New markets, products, deals and opportunities continually emerge and agile learners are needed to deliver results quickly – even in new situations. A commitment to learning and a hunger for dealing with challenging situations is key.” On the other hand, Deutsche Bank places a greater emphasis on agilemindedness – particularly the ability to deduce the right questions to ask when in doubt, and to quickly identify the most appropriate leads to pursue while conducting investment research. Think of it as a Sherlock Holmes-esque approach to problems, where you need to arrive at the right conclusion based on a combination of elimination, deduction, and extrapolation on the finer details.
Investment recruiters typically judge intellectual ability by your capacity to apply your knowledge to practical situations. They also want to see whether you are quick enough to catch the bigger picture in such situations. For example, perhaps you worked on a project during a previous internship together with a team of other interns. An agile-minded person wouldn’t just complete their assigned tasks – rather, they would be able to grasp how the project they are working on affects their employer as a whole and discern how the other interns’ tasks might influence that outcome. Make sure you demonstrate your ability to act on your deductions too! In the above example, you would ideally take a broader interest in your teammates’ work, and do your best to help them see a better outcome for themselves and reach it. You would also clarify doubts with your supervisor, and make the necessary tweaks as the project moved along.
Innovation The ability to create or identify new opportunities for the business is yet another highly-valued skill in the eyes of investment recruiters. Morgan Stanley specifically cites entrepreneurial drive as a key requirement in candidates. This means that their recruiters look for an applicant’s ability to spot areas in need