Financial Analyst

Considering a career as a financial analyst?

If you’re graduating with an Economics degree, we’ve found that the title Financial Analyst is the amongst the popular choices. The job itself is amongst various industries and companies. You can be a financial analyst in the tech or pharmaceutical industry. You can be a financial analyst for Amazon or Disney. Every successful company needs financial analysts to be successful and to stay successful.

Skills & Qualifications

The skills and qualifications are very similar amongst all industries and companies and only differ in specific technical skills. I.E. experience with SAP if working in a manufacturing environment. For the common skills and qualifications:

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, attention to detail
• Bachelor’s degree
• Financial modeling
• Verbal and written communication skills
• Microsoft Excel and spreadsheet knowledge

Other known titles

The title of Financial Analyst has been confused with Financial Advisor as both job titles have been known to be tweaked for the purpose of a job in a company but, the actual qualifications and skills are very similar when it comes to analyst jobs. The same can be said about advisor jobs. Those are the keywords in differentiating Financial Analyst jobs and Financial Advisor jobs: analyst and advisor.

Here’s a list of similar/alternate job titles within the Financial Analyst career field:

• Analyst
• Budget Analyst
• Business Analyst
• Business Development Analyst
• Commercial Mortgage Analyst
• Credit Analyst
• Data Analyst
• Equity Analyst
• Human Resources Analyst
• Industry Analyst
• Investment Analyst
• Junior Analyst
• Market Analyst
• Operations Analyst
• Performance Analyst
• Policy Analyst
• Quantitative Analyst
• Real Estate Analyst
• Risk Analyst
• Risk Modeler
• Sales Analyst
• Securities Analyst
• Systems Analyst
• Treasure Analyst
• Wealth Analyst
• Workforce Analyst

What’s entry-level like?

We interviewed alumni from University of Oregon and Andrew Simpson is one whom graduated with an Economics degree. He graduated in 2012, became a financial analyst and is currently a senior financial analyst for Mentor Graphics. Here’s what he had to say about his entry-level job,

“As a corporate financial analyst, basically, it depends. I was in financial planning and analysis which is the overall analysis of P&L (Profits & Losses) for a company. And I was in charge for R&D (Research & Development). The R&D cost control basically. I did all the budgeting and forecasting for the R&D part of the P&L of the operating expenses and capital purchasing.”

How’s salary?

You can expect the median with entry-level, which is roughly $59k according to Glassdoor as of November, 2017. Give or take about $5,000 and that’s the range you can expect. Simpson also noted during his interview that “after five years, you should be around 100k if you do it right.”

Is this the job for you?

It depends on what you consider the “right” job and what YOU’RE looking for. If you’re very technical and you like to stay “behind the scenes” then this is a great job for you as it requires great analytical skills, the ones you learned from achieving your Economics degree. If you’re in search of a job that pays more than 50k right out of college then this is a great job for you as there are a great amount of financial analyst jobs on the market. According to the BLS, there were 296,100 financial analyst jobs with a marginal increase of 32,100 jobs from the year prior.

Remember, your first job does NOT have to be your last job unless YOU want it to be.

Written by Eric Pham