Hopefully this is the correct forum, didn’t really think it was totally ‘off-topic’. There seems to be a decent number of people working in Finance on this board and I was hoping I could pick their brains for advice regarding getting into the industry.
I’m currently an Electronic Engineer but the climate in Ireland isn’t fantastic at the moment and to be honest doesn’t look fantastic going forward. Being an Engineer I’ve obviously got excellent Maths, done Statistics etc., so I’ve got some skills applicable to working in Financial services.
So I’m wondering what the best way to go about changing careers is? Do people think it’d be necessary to go and do some sort of post-grad course to change, or simply send some speculative applications to various companies highlighting compatible skills etc.?
I’ve seem some roles advertised that I’d be pretty sure I’d be able to do (it’s not like I’ve no financial understanding whatsoever), so I don’t think this is an impossibility.
Thanks in advance for any help, and please PM me if you’re not comfortable mentioning something on the thread.
A business related course isn’t always a requirement. A degree in engineering, maths or physics is a good start to working in finance. I met a derivatives trader from Morgan Stanley with an engineering background and all the people on his team had engineering backgrounds. I’d say more traders have a science/engineering degree rather than economics, accountancy or business studies.
A field you might find interesting, where very strong math skills are required, is quantitative finance. This area is concerned with the pricing and hedging of derivatives. It’s all about solving partial differential equations and usually involves computer simulations like Monte Carlo methods or finite-difference methods which you might have already come across. A good book to look at is Options, Futures and other Derivatives by J.C. Hull. Try the forums on www.wilmott.com too.
You can also study for CFA (chartered financial analyst). A lot of people already working in finance take this. Although it usually takes 3 years (2 years minimum). You get all the materials and study it yourself.
There are shedloads of jobs available in finance at the moment and companies are finding it hard to fill them. As an engineer you’d have a good chance at getting a job in something like “market risk” or maybe “quantitative risk”. Check out irishjobs.ie
focussing on the maths heavy side of
Market Risk
CDS / Derivatives traders.
If you are not too old, some of the big investment banks will take you on in their graduate programmes where they drill there finance thoery into you.
Or do a part-time course, the best in Ireland at the moment is the MIT in DCU or if you want to go full time the Quants masters in UCD…but to be honest, to get a real good job that will make the mege cash you want somewhere like
