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#FYI: Luke McCann, Financial Engineer, First Derivatives - YouTube
Channel: gradireland
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Financial Engineers straddle both the
IT world and the Finance side of things
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so if you've maybe a bit of a passion
for IT, maybe development, maybe you're
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more technically based in that sense but
you're also interested in
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financial products for the financial
markets and capital markets - it kind of
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straddles the two in a neat way,
which is nice in terms of getting
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exposure to different backgrounds. At the
moment I'm working on a client site here
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in Dublin, where there may be 40 people
as part of the team, where we
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are effectively implementing lots of
different financial products. I'm heavily
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involved in the testing team in the
testing side of things so once our
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developers and our business analysts
implement various changes and begin to
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build different financial products
throughout a range of different asset
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classes, they need to be tested. There
needs to be rigorous testing in order to
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ensure that effectively the products
work as expected in a testing
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environment before they can be signed
off and reviewed and agreed that they're
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working effectively by the business. Then we're able to launch them into the
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live production environment.
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In terms of hard skills, if you're analytical or
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if you're in anyway IT oriented, if
you have a development background,
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they're all necessary strengths.
However with the training that First
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Derivatives provide for you on
site and in the headquarters in Newry,
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I've never found people wanting in
terms of their hard skills.
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These are skills that are
typically able to be learned from people
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from all different backgrounds. We
would have people from law backgrounds,
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engineering backgrounds, financial, and
I'm personally coming from an accounting
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background myself. There is a real
blend in terms of the hard skills and I
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wouldn't encourage you to be put off by thinking that
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it might be too technical or anything
like that. What I found is much more
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important is your soft skills, your
communication skills and your general
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levels of awareness. As funny as it
sounds, just having good manners and
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good etiquette is very important.
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What I love about working with First
Derivatives is mainly the opportunity to
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travel and just the dynamism of the
different ranges of exposure that you
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get in your day-to-day work. I worked in
South Africa for 12 months.
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I had always basically just been in Belfast
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growing up, so my school, my university
and all my work until I joined First
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Derivatives was based in Belfast so
for me to be able to live in South
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Africa was incredible to experience the
culture there but more than that I was
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able to do an incredible amount
of travelling around that continent
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and get some brilliant experiences
through that.
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I would just recommend getting as
heavily involved as possible as you can
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in student societies. I know that
personally for me I probably got the
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role in the first place because while I
was in university I was heavily involved
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with a society called SIFE. It's now
gone through a rebrand and it's in all the
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major universities and financial
institutions in the Republic. It's now called
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Enactus. It's effectively a social
enterprise where you come up with
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different projects, which are all
charitable to some extent.
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It gives you more exposure and an
experience of organising events
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and dealing in a different sort
of professional context than you would
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typically in your part-time job
maybe. I know that during University,
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me personally and the same for most
people, you would maybe have a sporting team
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that you would work in your part-time
job and then you would have your
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undergrad. If you're able to
then step slightly above that and do
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something. All universities have good student societies,
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which are interlinked with both IT
and Finance, so don't be afraid to get
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down. It'll only take a couple of hours
out of your week and it will always show
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that little bit more with you whenever
it comes to your day at interview.
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