12. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 4)

Nowadays, decent positions in investment firms require you to be able to read and analyze Financial Statements . Do not worry, you do not need an accounting degree or have to be an accountant. You can set up an Investment/Finance Society and "hire" those BSc. Accounting and Finance or whatever degree who study Principles of Accounting to teach you how to read and analyze Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. How they are linked together. Basic accounting principle Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders Equity. How to read, construct and analyze Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. Etc.

For you who want to be a banker, I have a cold joke for you. There is a bunch of candidates who went together for interviews with an investment bank. There was only one available position but they were all equally good and the interviewer had hard time deciding which one to hire. The interviewer then gave them a final task which test their ability to handle long calculations. Each of the candidates was given a laptop and they were asked to open the calculator application. All of them, except one, accidentally opened Excel and he got hired on the spot. The moral of the story is, you will be expected to be very good with Excel if you want to be a banker.

Since MS Office training is not part of UOL education, you can put them as one of your society/club activities. You can teach people useful shortcuts every week, for example, if you want to insert a row, you only need to hold "Alt" then "i" then "r" instead of doing the long right click, then Insert then choose entire row then choose OK. If you want to do a column sum instead of typing "=SUM(A1:A8)" on cell A9, you can immediately hit "Alt" and "=" on cell A9. All these shortcuts are very useful and will increase your productivity when you work in the future. There are lots more cool shortcuts out there, it is your task to find out if you want to be a trainer.them out.

Finance is a very broad industry. What I mentioned above is mainly about Corporate Finance, you may want to take a look at Capital Markets (hint: $$$) as well. Right, I will stop here, if you really serious about setting up an Investment/Finance society/club and need more ideas, feel free to email me.

Now, it is not mandatory for you to set up a club/society though you will be a bit cooler if you do. You can join Student Representative Council or the existing club/societies but please compete for some management position e.g. Project Manager/Leader, Executive Committee, etc. that can give significant contribution to your CV. Joining sport clubs is not a bad idea too, but try competing to be captain of the team instead of just ordinary members. Joining a Toastmaster Club is a good idea because it can give a signal that you have excellent communication and presentation skills. In fact, you may learn how to create effective power point slides when you are preparing a speech.

Even though I emphasized a lot of extra curricular activities, please never ever put them before your education. Do not join too many clubs/societies more than you can handle. If you think it's too much to juggle between studies and extra curricular activities, then join at least one and not more than two clubs/societies.

Do not spend all your time studying because too much emphasize on Education section in your CV signals that you are nerdy and dull. On the other hand, too much emphasize on Extra Curricular Activities section with lousy marks or honours may signal that you are a playful idiot. So, try to strike a balance between education and extra curricular activities.  

Anyway, it looks like I did not get my 50 comments but I do not want to disappoint those who had left comments on previous post. So, for those who had left comments, please post your email address in the comment section (on that post, not this one) so that I can send the exclusive CV to your inbox. I will remove your email address once I copy it down. 

Next week, I am going to cover about CV writing. The first 3 persons who put comments on my next post will get a free consultation with me regarding CV and Cover Letter. I will even help you rewrite your CV and Cover Letter if necessary.

See ya !