If stocks, securities, and investment mediums intrigue you, then a career in finance may be worth considering. The industry offers a diverse range of career choices to professionals as well as beginners who possess the required skill sets. Financial services are multifaceted.
Before deciding to venture into the field, it is essential to consider the kind of roles available for MBAs in finance, what skill sets are needed and valued for those roles, and what trends in hiring processes have been like.
Team InsideIIM reached out to Professor Nagarani M, Head of Corporate Relations & Career Services at Krea University’s IFMR Graduate School of Business to answer all those questions. Read on!
Professor, finance seems to be one of the most lucrative professions currently. What is the overall growth expected in terms of remuneration and career trajectories for finance professionals going forward?
Accounting and Finance salaries in India range from 13,300 INR per month to 66,000 INR per month. The median salary is 32,200 INR per month, which means that half (50%) of people working in Accounting and Finance are earning less than 32,200 INR while the other half are earning more than 32,200 INR.
Accounting and Finance professionals in India are likely to observe a salary increase of approximately 11% every 14 months. The national average annual increment for all professions combined is 9% granted to employees every 16 months. Accounting and Finance is a high bonus-based field due to the generally limited involvement in direct revenue generation, with exceptions of course. The people who get the highest bonuses are usually somehow involved in the revenue generation cycle.
The average salary for Accounting and Finance is 3% more than that of all jobs and is expected to grow at 10-11% every 10 to 14 months considering the economic growth rate and historic trends making it one of the most lucrative domains to pursue in the current time.
Today, what are the prominent job roles and necessary skill sets that corporates are recruiting finance postgraduates for?
There are numerous job profiles for MBA graduates like Consultants, Sales, Traders, Investment Bankers, Credit Managers & Specialists, Financial Analysts, Corporate Controllers, Insurance & Risk Managers, Portfolio managers, and Bank managers.
Most of these roles require a strong foundation of basics of finance and accounting. However, recruiters prefer some level of technology inclination among students such as proficiency in Excel and Powerpoint. Also, database concepts and languages like SQL are valued by many corporations.
What are the top 10 skill sets must-haves that will put students in a prime position for a promising career in finance?
- A formal accounting qualification
- Interpersonal skills and cross-cultural management skills
- Financial reporting and forecasting
- Analytical ability:
Companies are looking to hire employees who have the ability to analyze scenarios and draw suitable conclusions. Candidates must demonstrate their analytical abilities with real-world examples and KPI driven results.
- Technical knowledge:
Proficiency in database concepts and languages like SQL is important.
- Banking fundamentals and reporting
- Capital market awareness
- Behavioral finance
- Cost accounting
- International financial management and derivatives
Please share with us some of the initiatives taken by IFMR to effectively prepare students for the final placements & summer internship season.
We engage students right from the moment they join us for their course work until they are placed. We take up regular:
- Career Grooming Exercises
- Industry Interaction series of webinars
- Alumni Interaction series
The intention is to offer multiple channels of learning for the students. We groom them rigorously throughout their curriculum and by the time they sit for internships and placements, they are ready and prepared to take on the roles they want.
With the emergence of fintech and analytics, what are some of the jobs of the future for which students are being prepared at IFMR?
For analytics we have a dedicated Data Science major curriculum over the 2-year duration of the MBA. This covers all aspects of data wrangling, modeling, visualization and interpretation through courses in statistics, machine learning deep, learning and natural language processing, culminating in a semester-long capstone project executed in Python or R. For other students, we hold overview workshops on machine learning, Python and R, so that all IFMR GSB students gain basic skills in data science.
IFMR has spearheaded financial education through extensive offerings in the latest financial courses and skills to its students. If you would like to delve deeper into the IFMR MBA, check out: https://bit.ly/2Om8Cnl
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