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Hiring Financial Analysts: Top Skills to Look for in a Job Applicant
The role of a financial analyst is one of the toughest ones to break into. A financial analyst is responsible for perusing data to identify potential value gaps. Junior analysts tend to work a lot more on obtaining data and preparing financial models. In contrast, senior analysts are the ones to prepare investment theses, structure reports on financial status and risks. As hard as it is to break into, hiring for the role is just as hard. Here are a few things to consider while hiring a financial analyst.
What Does A Financial Analyst Do?
A financial analyst is responsible for various things, including data gathering and filtering, analyzing past performance, and projecting future performance. Financial analysts look at the return on investments and risk versus reward for certain assets. They also examine the rate of return, or how much money is made, for investment in stocks, options, and other securities. Here’s a short list of responsibilities held by a typical financial analyst:
- Analyzing the company's financial data, including budgets, revenue growth, R&D spending, income statements, and tax liability to ensure that the company is on track to meet guidance and past projections.
- Analyzing the capital and operating expenditures to carve out creative plans to reduce costs.
- Identify industry trends, advise the company and recommend actions.
- Prepare financial models of the financial status and risks undertaken by the organization and ensure that the risks are within reasonable limits of the guidance.
- Exploring different investment and M&A activities, create financial models to determine if they would be an effective use of capital for the business.
Types of Financial Analysts
There are many different types of financial analysts, each with their responsibilities. Typically, a financial analyst may be tasked with gathering information from the market, evaluating the data, and making predictions about how markets will change in the future. They may also find patterns in data to help businesses make decisions, such as when to buy or sell an asset. But each specific role has responsibilities that are associated with it. The different types of financial analysts are:
- Financial Planning Analyst: A financial planning analyst uses both quantitative and qualitative metrics to analyze an organization's operations. They can help perform an accurate assessment of the company’s finances and involve overseeing financial statements and investments.
- Risk Analyst: Risk analysts review investment and expansion plans to perform risk and cost-benefit analysis on opportunities. They can also advise the company on methods to increase profits or grow revenue.
- Qualitative financial analysts: They are responsible for evaluating investment opportunities into stocks, bonds, and other securities. They are also responsible for studying general economic and business trends and preparing reports about an organization’s financial statements and revenue forecasts.
- Budget Analyst: Budget analysts are responsible for monitoring the budget within an organization. They work in tandem with executives to determine exact funding requirements for projects and evaluate the prospects of several large purchases. They also ensure the compliance of the budgets with the regulations prescribed by regulators.
- Investment Banking Analyst: Investment banking analysts are responsible for assessing the needs of a company and identifying potential investment opportunities. They are also responsible for monitoring existing investments and helping with divesting if the need arises.
- Equity Research Analyst: An equity research analyst works for both buy and sell-side firms. They research and create reports about stocks and other equities. They are also responsible for setting price targets and stock ratings. They are highly specialized and usually limited to a particular industry or region for their analysis.
Why You Should Hire A Financial Analyst
A financial analyst provides insight into the performance of an organization or company, including how it's doing financially and what resources are necessary to take the company to the next level. A financial analyst can provide you with valuable information about the company's current financials and the company's financial health moving forward, which is critical information in regards to the future vision of the company. A financial analyst provides actionable insights that can lead to an immediate improvement in the performance of the business. A financial analyst can also develop business cases that can help while debating core business decisions, such as pricing a particular product. A financial analyst can also help improve the cost structure for the business by analyzing the budgets and spending and, therefore, suggesting cost-cutting measures.
Required Skills and Qualifications for a Financial Analyst
A career as a financial analyst requires excellent quantitative, problem-solving skills, and communication skills. It is tough to find good talent since all the graduates from elite universities such as Harvard and Wharton are recruited almost exclusively by investment banks and technology companies, given the enormous bonuses in IB and lucrative stock options in tech. Regardless of that, here are some skills a financial analyst must have:
- Background in Finance, Business, Accounting, Business, or Statistics.
- Strong preference for MBAs.
- Experience working in business/finance.
- Experience working with Microsoft Excel.
- Proficiency in financial modeling.
- Strong analytical and interpersonal skills.
- CFA and other certifications.
How Atidan Technologies can help you hire the best financial analysts for your business
Atidan has access to the largest talent pool in the world with a proven track record of customer satisfaction. Atidan provides result-oriented staffing services so that you can focus on your running business. We have highly experienced recruiters with a strong technical background across North America, the EU, and APAC time zones. Atidan boasts of high retention rates for all vetted candidates. With the help of guidance from our dedicated project managers and experts, the team built for you will deliver consistently. With over eight years of experience in staffing and global offices in the USA, UK, India, SEA, and success stories across various industries, Atidan can manage all your hiring needs.
