Across the United States, many people have preconceptions and stereotypes that they believe to be true about those working in the business field. Personally, when I hear someone works in the business field, there are immediately several stereotypes that pop into my head about the average work day in a business. I picture well-dressed people going to their boring nine to five job doing the same thing each day. They usually strut in with their computer bag or briefcase and a cup of coffee rushing to be on time, only to sit in their cubicle crunching numbers for eight hours. They usually like math, have good communication skills, and are very motivated to make money by putting in hours and hours of work.
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In order to put these preconceptions to the test, I set out to find a business related textbook to learn more about the business field. One textbook that I was able to get my hands on is about finance. Finance is a major in the business field. Many people with a finance major often find jobs in the financial services industry, or “companies that provide monetary asset management and other services” (142, Garman, Forgue). People with a finance major can acquire jobs as financial analysts, financial planners, risk managers, applications developers, and quantitative analysts.
This textbook provided some information about the skills, traits, interests, and characteristics needed for this major that correlate with my preconceptions. For example, most people with this major do need a lot of math skills and communication skills; however, there are other valuable skills that a person working in this field might need. They must have exceptional analytical skills in order to gather and analyze information. Also, they must be good leaders, even if working an entry level job, in order to have effective communication and teamwork. Some other traits that are helpful for the job include confidence, the ability to work technology with ease, professionalism, and the ability to build relationships.
In addition to some of the traits needed, the textbook also provided insight into some of the types of tasks these professions may need to complete on a daily basis. They may need to interpret and analyze the finances of a business or person, monitor cash flows and predict future trends, form long-term plans for businesses and clients, manage budgets, build relationships with other people such as auditors, bankers, and solicitors, produce financial reports, and much more (104, Garman, Forgue). As you can see, there is more to the job than my preconception which was simply crunching numbers all day in a cubicle. There is actually a lot of time spent with groups of people and communicating with people outside of the office.
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As you can see, this textbook provided a lot of information about finance careers and proved to be of tremendous help to me. While it did not provide a lot of information about the daily lives of people with financial careers, it provided a lot of information about the traits, characteristics, and tasks of those with a finance career. I also learned a lot of vocabulary about finance itself. It helped me realize the amount of depth involved with finance. There are so many concepts and hundreds of vocabulary terms that I have never heard before, which opened my eyes to how much there is to learn about this field. I realize that I did have a couple of preconceptions that were true, but so much more to learn. This textbook was extremely effective and I am amazed at the amount I could learn.
-Brianna
Works Cited
Garman, Thomas E., and Raymond Forgue E. Personal Finance. 11th ed. N.p.: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
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