# Masters in Finance Open Day

Data: 11-01-2025 21:43:22

## Lista de Vídeos

1. [In conversation with the Masters in Finance Recruitment & Admissions Team](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCKSJt728c)
2. [Programme Overview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s34Qybrp3D4)
3. [The Career Centre](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsW8ZXw-Q0c)
4. [Alumni Panel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lloh_UebOY)

## Transcrições

### In conversation with the Masters in Finance Recruitment & Admissions Team
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLCKSJt728c

Idioma: en

hello and welcome to this masters and
finance open day my name is david
simpson and i'm the recruitment
admissions director for the mba in the
masters in finance program at london
business school i'm delighted to be
joined today by an excellent team of
colleagues and throughout the day
including our host charlotte smith
we hope that we've put together a set of
sessions that are going to give you
everything you need to know in advance
of applying to the lbs masters and
finance program
first of all with charlotte i'll be
talking with the masters and finance
senior recruitment admissions manager
peter johnson front of all knowledge and
we'll have a discussion about the
program the governance development and
what's ahead and also what it takes to
be a massive finance student
then we'll have a session on the program
led by my colleague charlotte tate
another charlotte and i'm delighted to
tell you that we'll have our executive
director of careers uh christian domet
running a session with peter later on
and finally we'll have a panel session
with some really interesting alumni who
can give you their perspectives on why
they chose london business school the
masters in finance programme
and what they're doing now
it's a really exciting time to be
talking with you as all the new classes
are starting on campus um with the myth
actually being one month into the
program already
they all started in person on campus and
we're so excited to welcome them back
after a different kind of year
meanwhile um we've already started in
admissions season for the august 2022
entry applications are open and we hope
yours will be amongst the first of the
new ones arriving
we can't take questions in this next
section but there'll be other
opportunities in later sessions so thank
you so much for joining us today it
should be a really great event and now
over to charlotte to kick us off with
the first session
thank you david and hello everybody and
thank you so much for joining us today
i'm delighted to be here and welcome you
to the community if you're new around
here or to say hello again if you have
met us before and been along to other
events with us either virtually or in
person so hoping that you will find
today fruitful and walk away with more
information and insights that you hadn't
previously had
so as david mentioned for the next 30
minutes i'm delighted to be joined by
david and peter johnson as we discuss
the future of our post-experience
masters in finance full-time and
part-time programs
and while doing so we'll also take a
short look back at what the last 18
months or so has meant for lbs and how
we're building on that to move forward
better at lbs
and we'll also have some time in this
discussion to talk a little bit about
the admissions journey and who we are
looking for in our masters in finance
programmes
um to join us for our next classes and
inevitably become a lifelong member of
our alumni community at lbs so thank you
so much for joining us um a few things
to cover before we get started uh we
love an acronym at london business
school and so you might hear us refer to
the masters in finance as myth so we do
say myth and not mif and i will let you
know of any others as we go throughout
the day as well
as david mentioned because this is a
short 30-minute conversation we won't
take questions in this session but
charlotte tate our colleague will be
taking questions along with some student
ambassadors in the next session and then
for the rest of the day there will be an
opportunity to ask questions so do send
them through on the q a box whenever you
have one and we will try to get to it
today
and if we don't manage to then we have
plenty of live events throughout the
year each week for the masters in
finance specifically where you can come
and ask your questions and there are
breaks throughout the day we understand
that
a you might need your comfort breaks but
b you might not be able to stay with us
for the full time today which is
absolutely fine we will be able to send
any recorded content but as i mentioned
before if you do want your question
answered live then try and stay with us
throughout the day and make the use of
the breaks
so without further ado let's do some
introductions so first of all hello my
name is charlotte i'm the senior global
recruitment manager here at london
business school
over the mba program and masters in
finance programmes so really excited and
to be here to talk to you all because
this really is the the majority of what
i do is work with prospective students
pre-applications so while you're busy
doing all of your research into various
business schools and programmes
and getting to know different
communities that is what we're here for
to ensure that you have all of the
information that you need so very nice
to meet you and thank you for joining us
and we're also joined by david who
you've just met and david celebrates 25
years at lbs this year and has spent
that time in this team in recruitment
and admissions although it's had a few
name changes over the years and david
has also spent three of his years at lbs
as the elected staff representative
representative on the school's governing
body
and david is our recruitment admissions
director for the mba and masters in
finance so thank you for joining us
david
and we also are joined by peter johnson
who this year celebrated 32 years at
london business school
pj started working on the masters in
finance program when it launched in 1994
and is currently in the role of senior
recruitment and admissions manager
pj works very closely with every
applicant and every application that
comes through for both the full-time and
part-time programmes and joining his
time at lbs pj has also served three
years as a governor as the elected staff
representative
and pj specifically is committed to
driving inclusion and belonging at lbs
and is heavily involved in initiatives
for the lgbtq plus community and pj is
the co-chair of prouder lbs which is our
lgbtq plus staff and allies network and
is also one of the founders of the lgbtq
plus network at lbs which is currently
named out in business and is led as a
student club but pj might dive into what
that was uh 20 years ago or so
originally a little bit later
so i think for both of you that combined
experience of over 55 years of length of
service at london's business school
speaks volumes um towards the lbs
community and how much people really do
want to be a part of it so maybe
starting with up
peter as our as our longest serving
staff member among the three of us what
does it mean to be a part of the lbs
community and what exactly do you love
about it
yes thanks a lot charlotte i think um
for me
it's very much about
being a part of a big community and and
it's about that
collaborative style
and i
love the fact that the school
all of those interactions are across the
whole community so
a few minutes ago i was out on the front
lawn here we've got a barbecue for our
new students today
and we've got a lot of our alumni coming
along as well
and there's no sense of separation you
know there are staff faculty
students alumni all engaging and i think
one of the reasons i've stayed such a
long time is it's a fantastic place to
work but i'm endlessly energized by the
excitement and commitment of the
students we have here and
sort of working with the young keeps you
young
and actually their excitement and their
dynamism there's always new ideas and
new things happening
david i'll hand over to you
yeah i mean i like echo all your words
there i mean that's why we were both
involved in the governing body it's a
chance to see yet another part of the
community i think a lot comes from the
fact we're an autonomous institution
we're not massive but that gives us the
agility um to move quickly and to
challenge ourselves
and also have a strong sense of identity
that we define and we drive
and i think you know that's that whole
cliche about you know we're a family but
at the same time it's incredibly
professional and fast moving and and
just a brilliant place to learn quite
frankly spend years especially in the
recruiting and admissions field think of
what we do all day we're learning about
the world and jobs and how things happen
in all rounds all around the globe in
every sector
and every role and company within
finance so it's just a fantastic way for
us personally to learn but also
bear the benefits that you get as a
student later on
yeah i love that point on continuous
learning david and i'm going to come
back to that actually with a question
for you a little bit later
um but thank you for your thoughts on
community i couldn't agree more um lbs
is definitely a special place to be and
a special community
to be a part of um and i would argue
that in many ways our community has
gotten even stronger over the last 18
months although the world has tried to
uh tear us apart in many ways we've had
to find new innovative ways to stay
connected to come together pj you
mentioned whether it be across staff
students alumni uh you know our
community really is over for all regions
of the world and somehow we've managed
to stay connected um so thinking about
the last year or 18 months or so if we
stay on that topic a little bit uh pj
i wanted to ask you what we've seen in
the last year in admissions so anything
new or any surprises or just in general
the sorts of profiles that you've seen
coming through for the masses in finance
um
absolutely i think um
one thing we most definitely noticed uh
the last two years
was a really substantial increase in the
number of applications
and i think that's that's often the case
when there are particular challenges
they lead people to really reappraise
what their goals are what their career
plan is what their life plan is
and for a lot of people that will make
them think you know now is a good time
to upskill
finance
quite beyond quite without the pandemic
finance is so fast moving and
jobs that were you know
really significant areas of our
emissions a few years ago those sectors
might be declining quite quickly and all
the time there are new things arriving
so i mean it's very noticeable
how much more fintech we're seeing
and but also in existing jobs how much
more data and big data become
significant
and
david and i will probably touch on this
later
but um david's already said we need to
be very agile because the finance space
and the finance sector is changing all
the time so we need to be changing all
the time to reflect that
so i think one thing i've really noticed
is the um
we talk a lot about diversity and
diversity of nationality
is outstanding in all the programs at
london business school and i think
that's part of the learning experience
because
um
cultural
factors change the way that
finance is regulated internationally so
studying in that diverse environment
gives a lot
but i think one of the other key
challenges for me and my team
is ensuring that real diversity of
finance experience to really add to the
richness in the classroom
so
a hard couple of years
um i think
one thing i was saying to one of the
alums i was chatting with just now is
that
things that we'd always taken for
granted we no longer take for granted
something as simple as
the one-to-one face-to-face interaction
and um
we will never take that for granted
again and as david said we started the
program
in the classroom in person and the
dynamism of that is overwhelming because
people aren't just so excited to be
taking part in this journey um in person
rather than entirely virtually
[Music]
it really does feel alive again doesn't
it
it's it's just fantastic just buzz that
real sense yeah but it's an excitement
yeah yeah i'm i'm a bit envious of you
um on this beautiful day in the uk being
at the being at the bbq as well as being
here as well so thank you for taking
i will
get a half hour break for a burger later
yeah treat yourself
um but thank you for mentioning
classroom first there pj because i think
that's really key as to you know what we
look forward to you know in the year
ahead i think that is the key thing
really that human interaction again and
classroom first is what we're going for
so all of our students have joined us
here in london uh moving forward
um and so let's start let's go from
looking back to looking forward and
david i'd like to
hear from you a little bit as we start
to think about forward so as well as
classroom first another fantastic
development for the masters in finance
is that
we we are going to be having
a change in programme director which
means that we will have
somebody leading on all of our finance
degrees so both the pre-experienced
masters in financial and analytics and
the post experience
masters in finance is going to have the
same program director that being uh
debra fisher who is a finance expert and
we're really excited to see
those programs come together
as we move forward but in general david
you know as the world of finance sees
continuous change and with your
experience uh in your role how have you
seen lbs respond to that continuously
actually yeah i mean it's really
important that we we move
continuously and we react to change and
we also
define and drive change you know we're
not just following an industry we're
helping to set it so
with the fact that faculty you know the
depth of the finance faculty lbs is
amazing the number of professors we have
and what proportion they make up
you know to make us a center of
excellence and
that's why the myth was started that's
why it was invented running general
management programs but then recognizing
this expertise we had and the
requirements um that we can react and
lead the way so
i mean that origination by faculty has
changed over years to get others
involved so now the mastermind finance
program is
is developed as we go in a rolling
method by what's called mythboards of
the masters of finance board this is
made up of senior faculty leadership of
uh of of the subject area
and and the administration as well
careers staff so people like christian
who's talking later alumni very
importantly students
and within the alumni people who
represent different sectors you know
we've had um finance headhunters in
there
as well as people working all the
different functions both growing and
changing and so we have some really good
discussions about what the next
step should look like
obviously faculty being faculty they
want their subject matter to dominate
and that's the most important thing in
the world that's what you want your
professors to be saying and that's where
we want their loyalty to be but then
everybody else together can kind of
think now we also need this and we need
to be responsive and we need to be in
partnership
with employers and actually in in real
terms faculty at lbs work very closely
with employers anyway it's where anyway
it's where their research is deployed
you know so they have their own contacts
that can they can bring in to use roles
as well so that myth board gives us the
opportunity to to change and adapt and
to lead and so that we're never lagging
we're always leading
thanks dave and can you dive into what
you mentioned there about faculty sort
of being the
experts in their subject area and maybe
just around
um
some of the sort of examples of finance
that our prospective students may be
coming from um and where we do sort of
have expertise in that lbs
sure so i mean now we we have both um
tenured professors and then we have
adjuncts as well we have
speakers so being in london gives us a
distinct advantage to get people into
the classroom um or actually virtually
from anywhere in the world and those
connections we have
means that it's a number of people who
deliver that content
but going right back to the start when
it was pj if i'm right elroy dimpson and
paul marsh that's right yeah as well as
establishing that the ftse index also
established a london business school uh
masters in finance and built it up and
we've grown that finance faculty so
there's people like alex edmonds and his
really interesting study of how um
looking at the
delivering purpose and profit within
organizations through to some very
specialist electives
within the concentrations that i can
barely keep up with let alone you know
really understand but that's as it
should be so that when you students come
in to join the program you've got
cutting-edge thinking on very specialist
topics as well as some of the the
general material that's essential so a
very important early part of the program
actually it runs through the program to
some extent it's called purpose of
finance and that's really for all of us
to sit and think what it what is this
thing what does finance do why is it
essential what are our responsibilities
and what are the interactions with the
world and society and again that's the
thing of how it leads
so that we are giving us a full rounded
philosophical view of finance as well as
very technical aspects that will help
people to to get specific jobs or help
them with their careers later on so it
is that mixing of that pot that's so
important um
uh and all of this stuff is faculty led
with us in the institution helping to
coordinate it
and question as well i think that's the
great thing about working another great
thing about working in academic
institution is the ability to question
and we have to be quite brave to do that
with senior professors because they know
their stuff but the point is that that's
what academic institutions should be
about
absolutely and you mentioned electives
there and and the sort of growth of them
and development of them um and in the
next session actually charlotte the
other charlotte is going to be joined by
a couple of our student ambassadors who
will be um staying with us for their
fourth terms they've completed one year
at london business school already and
we'll be able to share
their insights on electives and perhaps
some of their favorite ones and favorite
classes um
in reflection of their last year as well
just a quick question remark on that is
that
just to elaborate on a point that david
made which is really important is that
having our all of our range of programs
and particularly specialist programs
like the masters in finance and the
masters in financial analysis
means that we have um
one of the biggest concentrations of
finance faculty internationally
and who are very attracted to teaching
here partly because it is london and
world's global financial hub
but also the reward of teaching students
who are really fascinated by their areas
of research so it's kind of creating
that virtual circle
of um having successful
finance degrees alongside our general
management degrees like the mba means
that we can support a really critical
research centre here
which um our faculty love they love
teaching on the masters in finance but
also means that we can have a much wider
range of electives than any competitors
school has and i would really encourage
people to look that up on the website
because um charlotte will as you say
touch on this later but the range is
phenomenal
yeah absolutely good advice thanks pj
um so if we if we stick with looking
ahead but move the direction a little
bit and and back to you pj in terms of
who we're looking for in the year ahead
and i think this is a frequently asked
question um in in my role um who do you
want at london business school so can
you tell us from an admissions
perspective um the type of person that
you're looking for on the masses and
finance um i was listening to our dean
um speaking recently and i think he said
something really profound
is that our job in
particular in recruitment admissions
isn't about recruiting students it's
about recruiting alumni
and it's ultimately that what we are
looking for
is people who will have
a successful future career in finance
essentially we're looking to
recruit
the finance leaders of tomorrow
so they're people who will be
shaping the future of finance
that's why things like the purpose of
finance that david touched on are so
important
because we need to be addressing
how finance influences his society all
those areas around um corporate social
responsibility etc so i think what um i
think people
look at what we're trying to
the people who are trying to recruit
kind of slightly the wrong way around so
that people will fixate on elements like
um grades or gmat
or things like that
whereas for me it's much more about
have you really defined that this is the
right program for you at the right
school
so it's critically about the amount of
research people have done and there's a
massive amount of research
information available clearly events
like today's
but also we would really encourage
people to have one-to-one
conversations with our students and our
alumni
just to get that real inside information
on what it's like to study here
i mean for me obviously we're looking
for people who are bright it's a very
intense program
and people need to be able to cope with
some quite
complex material um but i think
ultimately the the
massive thing for me is that people have
defined what they will benefit from the
program and not in a sort of short-term
list what's going to be my first job
after graduation
much more seeing
what's going to be the i you know the
investment is substantial so what is the
long-term roi going to be over the whole
of my future career so it's very much
people who
have a clear sense of how they will
benefit
but that's balanced by
how they will contribute
because we don't see this as a
purely transactional piece
it's a collaborative piece
so i already touched on diversity of a
culture diversity and finance sector and
within this we and the classroom is a
very collaborative space here it's not a
kind of
one-to-one um didactic process where the
professor is just revealing fact or
truth
it's uh it's a discourse it's a
discourse and
therefore we're looking for people who
are
going to bring along and be eager to
share their own
experience and
be adventurous take risks in discussion
help shape that future discussion
so really i think the key thing and i
think we've sent out and some of the
materials are linked to submitting a
strong application
where i talk about this in greater
detail but i
for the people here today i would say
really do your research thoroughly and
think through those two things what will
i benefit in the long term
and what will i contribute not just when
i'm at on a business school but when i
go into the world back to the world of
work when i'm a finance professional
when
so benefit to contribute
great thanks pj mo more great advice
there
um a couple of times today we've
mentioned uh the international diversity
across all of our degree programs at
london business school which we've
worked incredibly hard for we're very
proud of but we've also been working
very hard across the school but
especially in recruitment and admissions
on further diversifying our classes
beyond international representation
and focusing on gender parity and
fostering an inclusive environment for
people in the lgbtq plus community as
well
and this year we've also focused much
attention on important work in
increasing ethnic representation across
our classes
and specifically focusing on
black students with the recent launch to
support that of nine new black in
business scholarships which we are very
proud of and very happy with but that is
just one piece of work um
in a lot of work that's been happening
for us to to sort of strive towards
um some of these initiatives so
we've also focused on social mobility is
a part of that and there are various
scholarships and ways um that we will
sort of lead with that but we as pj said
what's really important is that we can
have some one-to-one conversations with
people so that we can guide uh guide you
a little bit better through your
admissions process so do come forward
and
and share some information about
yourself after today if you've
considered
pj's two questions and you feel like lbs
is the place do get in touch with us on
a one-to-one
um basis but pj coming back to that
point on
um
inclusion and belonging at lbs
can you tell us what it means to have
diverse classes and what impact that
actually makes on the learning
environment at lbs why are we doing what
we do absolutely i think and you're
absolutely right i mean the
look at let's look firstly at um
diversity of nationality i think you
know a lot of schools will say that
they've created a
truly global environment
i think very few
um
schools could claim it with such great
authority as lbs does and that's partly
in the nature of london london is a
truly outstanding international city
um for me it's though it's not just um
one of those nice things to have because
you can say hey
i studied uh in a study group with
somebody from peru and somebody from
china and somebody from uzbekistan
to some extent that's then so what i
mean it's nice to have it's
just
a bit different
but it's more than that i think it's as
i touched on
it's the fact that you know
culturally there is so much diversity
and that cultural diversity informs
the way business is done and the way
business is regulated so i think it's
within the classroom you know if the
professor stands up and says
this is how
private equity is regulated in the uk
tell us about the experience in your own
country you know you might have a much
tighter regulatory regime you might have
a much looser one
tell us about how that actually plays
out
how that informs the development of that
particular part of the finance industry
so i think that part of it's more about
cultural diversity than it is about
national diversity
and
things like um
working towards gender parity
is just a good thing to do it is just
one of those things we all aspire to
and
achieving that greater
gender
equality
is also helping drive
achieving greater representation of
women in senior positions in the finance
industry more generally so it's part of
our commitment to that
alongside which you know the
representation and involvement of
lgbtq people again is one of those
things that we are committed to do
because it is a good thing to do
but those culture seeing that kind of
cultural
representation in the classroom is just
part of what makes this a really rich
community
and a really
rich classroom experience
great thanks pj i think that's well
summarized
um and you know it's great when we have
um as pj mentioned you know this is
one way that you can uh
get to know us but uh we also host
various recruitment admissions events
where you can get to know your peers so
fellow applicants and i think that's a
fantastic way in those kind of
conversations um where you can already
start to feel what that classroom
environment might actually be like at
lbs so we would encourage you to come
along to any of the sort of more
collaborative sessions to get a taste
for that as well definitely thank you pj
um okay so so we need to start to think
about wrapping up um soon i just have
one final question i'm gonna come to you
david um for this one um we've spoken a
little bit on the last 18 months touched
upon
the pandemic we've touched upon the
increase in applications we've seen over
the last two years
um and i think that you know a pandemic
can drive professionals to want to
broaden their knowledge their skills and
above all actually their network as well
um so david my simple question for you
is is now a good time to apply for
business school
it's a very personal question depending
on who's going to answer it i think um
you need to see where you are in your
career um and see where you are in terms
of your readiness for education um
only then can you decide yes now is the
time we we we have a
wide portfolio of programs that are
designed for people at different stages
of their career um so we talked about
you know we're going to have our
director working on both our mfa and our
masters in finance they're very
different programs one is designed for
people with zero to two years experience
and our myth program is for everybody
with two years upwards but typically
five six years work experience in
finance already so it's about fitting
the bill for each certain program and
being ready it shouldn't just be about a
transactional relationship with the
school of getting me my next job or
making a switch into my dream career i
think what's unique about masters in
finance because i work on the mba as
well and with masters and finance we
have a
a very personal discussion with our
applicants
and about what career possibilities
might be
um and we help them even during the
admissions phase i think it's quite
unique actually before an admissions
decision is given about
this is the kind of thing you can expect
with your past experience
and what london business school does and
the networks we have because you know
many things are possible but everything
is not possible some of that is about
timing some about some of it is about um
what you've done and what you need to do
next before the next step so
it should never be just a means to an
end it should be yeah i i need a change
i'm ready for this um
i need to i need to learn i need to
build my career um
and i'm really open-minded i'm hungry
for it that's what you have to be you
have to come into this expecting to give
everything so
you know you're giving for the full-time
program you're giving up your career for
a break with a part-time program you're
juggling on both you might have you know
you might have a family that still takes
president but really the miss program
has to become your life um so only when
you feel that you are ready to give that
much um to get out of it you know for
the next
20 30 years of your career in your life
because these are life-changing programs
and not just career changing you know in
terms of your perspectives where you
might end up living you know the some
things you didn't expect so you might
come into these programs saying this is
what i know i want to do so during this
time here you might find out that either
that's not an option or there's a better
option for you so open-mindedness the
timing
about whether you're actually ready to
do this and fully engage is the key i
would say okay thank you very much
great advice um and and hopefully um you
know this conversation has informed
people but also inspired people um to
start to
deepen their
research of london business school um
and their other options in terms of
their career as well um and hopefully
we'll be seeing some some applications
from some of you joining us today so
david um and peter thank you so much for
joining me today for this conversation
and for those of you um joining us at
the moment we're going to have a short
break now we'll be back at 1 40 bst
which is in about four to five minutes
um
with charlotte tate our colleague who is
going to leave lead a program overview
and be joined as i mentioned by students
as well who will be able to provide
their student voice and experience um on
their time at lbs
um and for more information on how to
submit a strong application some of the
parts we've touched upon in this
conversation there is some on-demand
content for you uh which is all on the
registration page that you'll have for
this event
so thank you so much for joining us so
far and we will see you again in just a
few minutes
thank you bye

---

### Programme Overview
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s34Qybrp3D4

Idioma: en

hello everyone and thank you so much for
joining our open day today and for
joining this masters in finance
programme overview
so my name is charlotte tate i'm the
masters and finance student recruitment
manager i've been at the school for
about two and a half years now working
on the masters and finance program
my role is to help you prospective
students to submit um the strongest
application possible
so to do that i hold events such as this
also webinars q a panels or smaller more
intimate drop-in events
as i mentioned my job is to support you
throughout the application process so
once you've submitted your cv we arrange
a one-to-one zoom consultation review
and to discuss the application and the
best time for you to apply
one of the main things i encourage
applicants to do is to speak to one of
our student ambassadors
they've been through the
admissions process they know exactly
what we're looking for and they know the
programme
so today we're lucky enough to be joined
by two of our student ambassadors
um
our first ambassador is anesu who's our
full-time ambassador and malcolm roy who
is one of our part-time ambassadors
anesthesia would you like to introduce
yourself please
sure thanks alex hi everyone um so like
charlotte said my name is elise musendo
born in zimbabwe raised in south africa
completed my undergraduate degree at the
university of edinburgh economics and
finance prior to joining london business
school
um the full-time program i worked in the
dead capital markets team at investment
bank back home in south africa
thank you malcolm roy
yeah thanks charlotte so as uh charlotte
said my name is mercury anthony i'm an
audit manager at uh pwc uh best in
london office and i'm
in my bank in a capital market practice
so yep i did my undergraduate in in
tanzania so that that that's where i'm
originally from so i moved to the uk in
2019 as part of instagram and to to peel
off with london
yeah so i'm then i joined the move uh
after that
thank you
um so today we'll be discussing both the
full time and the part-time program
we'll delve into the program content and
also talk you through our admissions
requirements
and then we'll open up our q a with
myself and ernesto and malcolm so if you
do have any questions for any of us
please do use our chat function and send
them through to us and then we'll get to
your questions um at the end
so as i'm sure you know our masters in
finance is a post experience masters
meaning we we require a minimum of two
years finance related work experience
we'd ideally like you to have a minimum
of three years from the start of the
program the class average on the
full-time program is six years and for
the part-time slightly higher at seven
years
so just to reiterate the program is a
post experience program and no one will
be on the program with less than two
years work experience
so here you can see our two programs the
full time program and the part-time
program so both programs have exactly
the same content the only difference is
the structure and the duration of the
programs
so the part-time program is 22 months
long and the full-time program is either
10 months or if you choose your optional
fourth term the program is 16 months
the part-time program is held on friday
evenings and saturday all day every
other week
and our full-time program is full-time
on our london campus
as you can see the full-time program is
slightly larger than the part-time
program and the part-time has a slightly
higher number of years work experience
so i'd just like to ask our student
ambassadors unless you chose the
full-time program can you explain
to us a little bit about this choice um
in terms of your work experience how
many years work experience did you have
at the start of the program um and i
know you didn't choose our fourth term
but did you ever consider choosing that
sure sure so thanks charlotte um so just
to touch upon my introduction so like i
said i completed my undergraduate degree
then i returned home and joined barclays
africa
um as as part of their graduate program
i've been there ever since i was there
for the last six years so i think
consistent with what charlotte has on
the slide there i was able to obtain
solid corporate investment banking
experience across africa so including
south africa nigeria king and mauritius
and prior to me actually joining the
females and the dead capital markets
team i was actually responsible for the
origination and execution of bond
insurances for various fi clients and in
addition to my
dcm responsibilities i was actually
hitting up the ratings advisory
franchise
that being said so in those past six
years i had accumulated a lot of debt
experience so one of the reasons for me
was that i was now at the next stage in
my career so i just been promoted to vp
and i wanted to join the masters in
finance program to not only broaden my
financial knowledge but also develop my
leadership potential for the next role i
take on in the organization
and
so for me you'll see i think we'll touch
upon it later so you'll see with my
courses and everything i pursued i
wanted to expose myself to different
areas of finance so i really knew i
loved debt but let me
touch upon the equity related courses
and so forth
and then in terms of the fourth term
the fourth term was an option i think
option but you'll see that you make
plans and things change in this world
and you'll see it lbs will open doors
for you and yeah so currently
i'm not doing the fourth term but that's
simply because i have other
opportunities that have come my way
yeah i think that's something important
to remember as well when you're writing
your application and you know you may
think you've got it all planned out but
you know things change you don't know
who you're going to meet or which
particular courses are going to take you
to places
thank you um so malcolm you chose the
part-time program um did you ever
consider the full-time program
um and can you just touch a bit on the
work-life balance as well yeah yeah i
think yeah so the last point is a bit
tricky in terms of the work-life balance
if you too opt for a part-time program
so
you've got to really be disciplined yeah
so to to manage that but so yeah coming
back from my experience so i moved uh to
the uk
uh
for my second so
uh i was kinda i had to to keep on
working so i was to to uh keep my
contract in terms of mr common so the
only option i had was to do their patent
program
so and also i valued my my work
experience highly so i just wanted to
to get my work experience and uh at the
same time completed masters so i thought
the patent program was the best option
for me so and that was um i was also in
terms of finding my
my fees we have probably as part of my
job so i thought uh again so i was kind
of in a box where that was the best
option for me yeah so i think that's and
then i chose to play
for the party program so to be honest um
uh never had i thought of the part of
the full time because uh my options are
kind of kind of limited in that sense
yeah
so in terms of um
uh the work-life balance
yeah it's really tricky as an auditor i
do work like like long hours it worked
so you've got some
sometimes you go to work over the
weekend so it's it can it can be really
really tricky to to
maneuver between work and and um
and study so but again so you just have
to be really really disciplined so to
ensure
you you uh
plan wisely in terms of your timetable
in terms of your changes and speak to
your to your peers at work just to for
them to understand are you having this
commitment for two years you've got to
uh and they will support you by my
bosses to support me in terms of my
studies so that's really helpful so they
understand when i'm i have a commitment
at school so they provide me that time
so a key point is for you to really
really be disciplined and to
ensure you manage your time wisely uh
yeah
so i think that that was
that's a key btv to take the parts in
program yeah
thank you yeah that's something else we
always say as well having the support of
your company um really will make all the
difference
um so here we can see a snapshot of our
current full-time class so as i
mentioned before our programs are very
diverse you can see we have 45 different
different nationalities represented on
the full-time program and 96 of our
students are international
um ernesto can you talk a little bit
about the diversity in your class and
also your study group and
maybe throughout the school and any
clubs that you joined as well
sure thanks about the solid i think the
best way to describe my study group was
mini un we had
um we all came from all walks of life
which was pretty interesting given the
covert environment when we had to meet
together so
um i had a
colleague
from peru and a colleague from canada i
had a colleague from south korea and
india and then we had myself from south
africa so
it was very diverse and in that regards
definitely made some
friends friends for life and i know if i
can travel anywhere in the world i have
the whole world covered in that regard
um yes i think you'll see that obvious
is very deliberate in exposing you to
different people and different
viewpoints and yeah it was a it was a
good study group and yeah i think
we we stay in touch we stay in touch i
think the one guy unfortunately because
of covered he actually couldn't come
down and he was like hey can you just
keep my study pack and my and my
suitcase was like sure if you want me to
ship it through to i'll do it for you so
in that card we're very conscious it's
it's a very diverse program i mean you
can just see the stats i think these are
the 2022 stats but they're roughly
similar to what we had previously you'll
see that obviously makes conscious
effort to expose you to different people
in the world yeah
thank you
and so here we can have we got a more
in-depth view of the part-time class um
so even though everyone on the part-time
class has to be living within a
commutable distance to london um we
still maintained 80 international um
students representing 29 different
nationalities on the programme
um so malcolm can you talk a little bit
about the diversity in your class and
your study group
yeah sure so i think just to begin so i
think
one of the key benefits you you get at
by studying obvious is um
how you you meet different peoples the
ability to network with different people
get different perspective of how you
view things which is very very very
valuable
so yeah coming to my study group it's a
really diverse uh group because i
just beginning from me you'll realize
i'm from tanzania so not many people
have heard of jose sober so
you uh
it's really really really diverse you
and uh i've got people from um south
korea part of my group i've got people
from
germany part of my group i've got uh
people from spain and some from from the
uk so it's really you get to and it goes
farther within not just your uh
historical heritage but in terms of what
they've done in their lives in terms of
what works that they have been doing so
it's different you've got people again
in us management firms private equity so
you get different perspective um of and
this it really helps you as you even
during your studies because
one for example uh one of the core
courses we do on in our first is a
financial account which i might be an
expert in financial economy but you go
to corporate finance you've got a person
who's been doing maybe uh ask management
and things like that so it really helps
uh to bring things together and share
different views yeah
yeah i think that's something really
important as well i mean the class is
very diverse in terms of nationality but
also in terms of their finance and
career background
um so here we have a breakdown of the
program content so to start with there
are a few prep courses that you can do
online before the program starts uh then
you can see there's five core courses
which all of our students do
um these are topics that we think
everyone needs to know ensuring that
you've got a good foundation in finance
um
on top of the core courses there's over
50 to 59 different electives to choose
from you can choose between 8 to 11
electives
and we also have the option of four
concentrations so you don't have to
choose to concentrate um it's optional
but a lot of our students do decide to
do so
on top of these we have our very popular
practitioner courses which is a chance
for you to understand the real world
application of the theory that you're
learning
also our professional skills workshops
technical skills guided business
projects and lots of international
opportunities as well
um ernest can you talk a little bit
about uh the programme content which
electives did you choose were there any
that particularly stood out to you um
and did you choose to concentrate
so from the program contract i think
just working through your slide um
amongst the core courses i think we
chatted um perhaps my favorite had to
have been investments given my debt
capital markets background so i knew the
practical the practical side of it i've
been doing it my
essentially my entire work life but it
was good going back to the basics and
being able to consolidate that practical
experience with the theory so i actually
really enjoyed that
and then from elective courses i think
one of the things that's actually not
highlighted here is that you don't just
you're not just exposed to finance
electives you also have it's um also
exposed to non-finance courses so the
other
mba courses and so forth so perhaps
one of my favorite courses was actually
negotiation and bargaining
and you'll see that especially when
you're finishing your time at um lbs now
you want to enter into the workforce
it's definitely something a skill to
have and i really appreciated that and
in that course we did um live
simulations in terms of okay it was it
was the best course
if if you do apply get in please highly
recommend that course it's it's one of
those courses that were lost with you
for a lifetime i think in this world you
need to know how to negotiate um
your a rental contract for example uh a
work contract and so forth and just yeah
it just helps you know your work and i
can tell you right now i'm definitely
practicing
practicing those points in my my career
post lbs definitely
and then in terms of another value add
that i appreciate from the program
content was she touched um charlotte
touched upon it with the various
practitioner courses
one of the things that stood out to me
is that we got the head of dcm for bnp
parabata to actually take us through
dca from a from a european point of view
and i'm not sure if you guys are
familiar with the rankings vnp powerbus
is probably one of the the top
institutions when it comes to that
marketer was good having a good two
hours getting picking his brain and
hearing his thoughts on how the market
is
thank you okay
and malcory i'll just ask you the same
question were there any highlights in
terms of um core courses or electives
and um how many electives have you
chosen
yeah so
in terms of the core courses so i think
one
uh because mine my favorite one was
corporate finance
i had a i've got a strong background in
financial content analysis so i think so
it was just uh mastering the knowledge
you had but there are very new concepts
i was learning from corporate finance
which i really enjoyed and it was an
interesting course so
yeah it's uh i think i really value that
so in terms of uh electives so as a
part-time um during my first year i mean
i could only take three electives so i i
did fixed income credit risk and
megas mba and reorganization so i think
it's really difficult for me to pick one
of the three because
i think
all courses were really really really
interesting because um
and especially in terms of the knowledge
i gained from both courses so from all
courses which was really you've got um
practitioners coming into the courses uh
uh speaking the viewpoints after
some sort of a lecture so it's really it
was really um important for me so but if
i'm to pick if i'm forced to pick one i
think i'll go for
uh megas and mbrs so i think
that was interesting from partly because
maybe that's an area we want to to move
in future as i plan to transit in my
career so i think
it was really really practical we've got
we had um
head of investment banking from uh jp
morgan uh part of the lecture so uh very
uh practical insights from him uh from
uh the professor himself so i think it
was really um
very new concepts and it was really
practical for me
thank you and you being on the part-time
program have you found that you've been
able to implement this new knowledge um
immediately in your role
exactly for example
uh
taking i am an auditor by profession so
the concepts i learned from financial
content analysis so
some are really really practical and
because we go beyond to to real uh
accounting challenges uh currently
uh impacting different industries so
really i could really apply this to my
to to my job yeah
so it was really really practical yeah
so it's something i forgot also to
mention was in terms of their practical
courses i attended one on
uh
cfo fractional courses where we had um
everton cfo speak to us so it was really
uh
i think
i i was interested to to learn about the
football business and all that so
you get to learn different perspective
how uh cfos manage the businesses and
things like those so which we are all
practical so
i highly recommend if you have to
if you have to buy and join some yeah
take as many production quizzes as you
can
great thank you
um so now we'll just go on to our
all-important admissions requirements
so the first thing to do before anything
else is research so there are many ways
you can research the program so firstly
we have our website which has a wealth
of information on the program and the
application process and also the school
including included in the website is our
employment report so if you're
interested in which companies and
locations our students are employed in
post the masters
um
then this is
a great way to find out
um
as i said before we strongly encourage
you to submit your cv before you start
an application
so once you submit your cv a member of
the um recruitment team will review your
cv and give you personalized advice and
guidance on on your um cv and when's the
best time for you to apply
um again speaking to one of our student
ambassadors is also one of the most
valuable things you can do you know
they've gone through the program they've
gone through the application process
they know exactly what we're looking for
and they know the program in depth
um you know they were you once going
through this process
we also have our student admissions blog
which is updated regularly with hints
and tips um admissions hints and tips
and also um pieces written by our
students on their own personal
experience as well
um ernesto so when you were doing your
research on the program um what did you
find most beneficial um and you know
you're a student ambassador so when
perspective students approach you what
do you encourage them
to do
so i think justified go back to my
process when i was applying um exactly
what charlotte did i reached out to the
various student ambassadors people i'd
learned on the program i did my research
i went on the financial times lbs was
number one it just made sense
um
i spoke to people who had done various
programs at obs and they all were highly
um
were highly complimentary of all bs as a
school and then when i kick-started the
process before i even did anything i
actually sent my cv to the recruitment
team and charlotte knows this because i
actually sent my cv to her
and she got it and she actually took me
through and she was like yes go for it
we want you and i was like thanks
charlotte and then i did that
and then on top of that it's now making
sure you know your story and this is
something i truly um
encourage people when they reach out to
me know your story um know where you
want to be your career objectives the
impact you're going to make when you
join lbs and
and it's good just for your sense just
for your own career and also it will
also help you know when you come here
when you end up at obvious to hit the
ground running and take some time maybe
i don't know because we all work maybe
take three weekends or just some me time
where you just figure out this is where
i want to go this is where i see this is
the contribution i know make it obvious
and this is how i feel obvious will help
me get to wherever i want to go to
and yeah i think
probably it took me a solid
three three weekends before i had
finalized my application and knew what i
wanted to say and of course i reached
out to people who knew me who knew me
well who'd known me would see my career
progression and knew my story and i was
like please can you proofread this is
this consistent with my story and yeah
because
if your story if you can relay your
story it will make sense it will make
sense and i think
it will it will translate into it into
an offer yeah
thank you and malcoly did you reach out
to any part-time students in particular
um
or did you know any or work with any
before you joined the program and what
would you say is the most important um
part of research
yeah so yeah i definitely had to reach
out to patent students so i even
found them very linked in and
started the chat getting reviews and um
asked for the address in terms of uh
what should i do to just put a good
application but important also i think
uh the recruitment team uh i think uh
once i was interested then they
phoned me and uh
told me to send my cv and i sent my cv
they reviewed it they highly encouraged
me to
to make applications so i think a key
thing all stresses
to analysis point in terms of how you
tell your story because the key focus
here is um you should show how uh you've
got a passion for finance yeah because
uh that's very important so um and uh
what
what do you think that me fool will do
for you yeah so you have to clearly tell
that so do you think
why why is that important to you at this
point in your career so you have to tell
a story and that's really a key part
that distinguishes you distinguishes you
from from the rights of the applicants
yes i think key things is uh
reached out to student ambassador to get
their views also
uh speak to equipment in terms of
sending them your cvs and getting the
views where you should maybe upgrade
receive even uh to look even better then
i think just tell your story and uh you
should really show how you uh you're
passionate with finance and how you
think uh the myth is important in your
career yeah going forward yeah
yeah i think just to reiterate i mean we
are interested in your story and it's a
good um way of you to reflect you know
on your specific reasonings as to why
lbs why the master's in finance
so once you've completed your research
the um next part is the application so
our whole application is online
um within the application we require the
details of one professional reference so
when choosing a reference we encourage
you to choose someone who you know very
well
so someone you've worked very closely
with i'm a line manager for example
um however your reference doesn't need
to be from your current employer if
that's not a conversation you're ready
to have with them yet that's fine
um so also included in the application
form is two essay questions
so this is where your
research really comes in so it's a great
opportunity for you to reflect on your
reasonings for joining lbs and the
masters in finance as i said
um you know think about your career
goals think about how you could
contribute to the class and class
discussions what makes you stand out
and think about how you would integrate
into the lbs community as a whole so not
just on the masters and finance program
but throughout the school maybe in any
clubs and societies that you'd be
interested in
um so within the
application we also require either a
gmat or a gre
so we have no preference on um on either
entirely up to you
um on some occasions we can wave the
gmat so if you have cfa level 2 or above
then that's an automatic gmat waiver
if you don't have cfl level 2 then you
can also send in your transcripts and
we can assess your eligibility for a
waiver from those
and when you are sending in your
transcripts we do require all the
transcripts to be um
translated into english if they're not
already
um
and as soon as you have any um
any points how did you prepare your
essays um you can cast your mind back
sure i think like i said it's quite a
it's quite a process right and
and i do i do encourage you to all start
early it's not really and it gives you
time to reflect and like i said be able
to know and tell your story
and from the reference point of view um
i understand
if you don't want to charlotte's point
you don't want to tell your employer as
of yet
but i think in my case i went to a
colleague colleague
to two colleagues i think we had to get
two
um references if i remember and for my
bits i i researched people who knew me
who knew me from when i started as a
graduate and
who knew my story very well people who
could be like okay this is who knew this
is where i wanted to go in life and
who i could bounce back with and i also
had people who could read my essays and
it's very important to make sure
and i'm sure i was going to touch upon
this because
the next stage of the um the application
will be the interview and you're going
to have to relay the story so if you
need to be your true authentic self and
it will come come across in that
interview stage which is why i'm like
take the time
take perhaps like good three weekends
two weekends apply early i applied in
round one of my application and yes and
i think when i got to near final stage i
was like okay this is it and then i
applied i had my um my referees they
read my story they were like yes we
supported this is what you want to do
and even that make sure to reach out to
i think charlotte's point earlier reach
out to student ambassadors one of the
things that drew me to lbs is how
friendly everybody is if you reach out
we will respond to you
it's it's one of the it's one of those
crazy things and yeah
and be and reach that and you can even
mention mention how you you spoke to us
and i know a couple of students who
joined this program they actually it was
exciting for me because i got to see
their journey through they reached out
to me whilst they were thinking of
applying the actual application process
like hey this is how i'm thinking of
telling the story what are your thoughts
and yeah so two of them are actually
here and i think actually at an lps bbq
right now so yeah good
and then just to touch upon another item
is from a gmat gi point of view i think
start the preparation well in advance
and if that's not a
you're going to take like to charlotte's
point send through your transcripts
don't rule yourself out because you
haven't done the gmat or gi
like i said they're very accommodative
if you can prove that hey i've done cfa
perhaps if you haven't done that or you
can have a strong academic background
yes so which is also why it brings us
back to the point why if you are
confused at all have those early
discussions to
with the recruitment team like i said
when i first started that's how i first
knew charlotte i read i called her i was
like hi charlotte this is my cv what are
your thoughts um how should i go about
this like i said the team the
recruitment team is probably one of the
best
yeah and i'm not just saying that
thank you yeah i think that's again
something important um that unless you
said start this early you know if you
start these conversations with us early
about um having a gmat waiver it just
makes things a little a lot easier um
and a lot less stressful if you're
trying to work things out closer to a
deadline
um
malcory can you um
cast your mind back to the um when you
were writing the application um did you
have to sit gmat or did we wave gmat for
you and how did you approach your
references
yeah so i think i was like you so you
you gave me a waiver on gmat so
yeah but i think to honestly this point
i think they keep bid is how you if you
begin early then those conversations are
easier for you to
to have the conversation for him to
reassess if
you're eligible for a waiver or not so i
think
i think i began uh
a month earlier just to be before when i
wanted to submit my application in terms
of the timings then i
then i was likely to get to get a waiver
yeah
and so once you've submitted your
application uh we will let you know if
you've been selected for interview the
interviews are conducted by alumni of
our programmes so we match you up with
someone in your region and ideally
someone that has a similar career
background to you or maybe working
within an industry or sector that you're
interested in post the program
um so anesu could you talk a little bit
about your interview
yes um
the interview process was probably one
of the
it was the best it basically reiterated
the questions that i had been asked in
my application form and from my essay's
point of view and
it was very much serious but it was very
it was um light-hearted in the sense
there's no need to stress um
the my interviewer i'm actually really
good friends with my interviewer now and
he's like becoming a formal buddy and
it's part of that network that once
you're part of that network it's amazing
and
when i was um pursuing looking at other
opportunities he's somebody i could just
ping ping a message to him like hey
um this is what i'm thinking so i'm i'm
very much part uh pretty much part of
that family of his family so yes
and yeah if the interview process will
be seamless like i said if you know your
story if you've taken the time to
actually delve deep in your application
form and your essays it's just it's more
of a tick box exercise making sure
you've been consistent you know your
contribution um the contribution you
want to make in the world of finance or
wherever that may be what you're
planning on doing at lps
and so forth
it seems like the admissions team really
matched you up well with your
interviewer
oh yes uh yeah he he was amazing he he
was i think one of the things i
appreciated is that he was he came from
a similar background to me similar
background and his aspirations he was
also looking
he pivoted also i think yeah from he
also had a day capital markets
background he pivoted into a different
field so in that case we also got to
yeah to chat i'm like this is
this is what i want to do how did you go
about it and so forth so yes
and
and just reiterate there's no need to be
stressed it's a conversation make it
into a conversation they want to know
you as much as you want to know about it
yeah
thank you
and malcory can you just explain a
little bit about your interview please
yeah sure so uh to yeah to another
suspension
i was uh when i was preparing for the
interview i was getting a bit stressed
so
just reading stuff and all that i don't
know that's why i thought this will will
be maybe some sort of a very um
uh tough interview and things like that
so but i think uh
my interview was really friendly so it's
it's more of a conversation getting to
know me why uh the move how
do you think you'll um
the program will you'll benefit from the
program and become a
very good ambassador of the of lbs in
future because i mean that's the key
focus
as
a current student uh and potential
alumni in a year's time so you came to
have people in lbs who in the future can
be good ambassador of the school because
once school is highly ranked then you
your chances are even better as you uh
carrying the lbs name with you yeah so
yeah just uh
a key point is for you to be consistent
because um
uh you inter your interviewer will have
uh
your application and everything sent to
them so uh
they'll have to
they'll have registered and all those so
you should be consistent in terms of
um
why why you chose the move and all
things you write as part of your
application yeah it's about i think a
key point is don't get stressed so just
prepare and uh
easily and
just be consistent and i think should be
uh
easy interview for you to
to to do here
thank you
um and lastly we just have the
our admission deadlines so this is for
our full-time program so you can see we
have five um application deadlines
throughout the year
our round one is coming up on the 28th
of september
and here we can just see our part-time
deadlines so um there's seven part-time
uh application deadlines as opposed to
five for the full-time program
um and i'll just point out we do review
applications on a rolling basis
so now it's time for our q a
so we will just um yeah have a look in
the chat box and
see what questions we've been asked
charlotte can i jump in for one of them
yes
i started to answer it and got i didn't
quite get it right and somebody's asking
if there's a preference between gre and
gmat
and the answer is we don't mind we're
completely indifferent
some people prefer gre some people
prefer gmat we have no strong preference
and in terms of um the second part of
the question is asking about minimum
scores
and we never think in terms of minimums
um
we're always looking for you to put
forward the strongest that you can but
as a general rule um for gre you should
be aiming for
165 in the quant section and 155 in the
verbal section
and on gmat um a strong gmat is 650 and
above
um a really strong gmat is 700 and above
and anybody who's scoring lower than 600
we would really encourage to reset
and one more question um was about
elected
charlotte correct me if i'm wrong i
think people can
sub um
sit a maximum of 11 electives now yeah
between eight to eleven eight to eleven
yeah
apologies for butting in there
okay just to um talk about the electives
then so unless you how many electives
did um did you take
i did
the minimum eight
i would have taken eleven if i had
done the fourth term but like i said you
make plans and
other things happen and i was in a
fortunate position enough to not have to
take the poster so
could you talk us through about how your
plans changed in terms of your
internships and things
sure so if i had started i probably
would have said i wanted to go to ib but
as you progress and you take different
electives you get exposed to different
aspects so
there was a stage where i
actually was approached by fintech
company in that sense i would never have
thought i'd end up in um fintech and
currently now i'm talking to a people so
yes i actually did mention the people so
from debt to equity was different so
that's why i tell people it's it's crazy
and i think we we talked about it
earlier but in terms of
concentrations concentrations
um i think i remember when i did my
application i was dead set that i was
going to pursue this concentration but
somehow as the as as the electives
evolve and you learn different things
you end up either concentrating in other
avenues and so forth it just happens
naturally
that's what you want and yeah
and
thank you
and malcolm are you in the process of
selecting your electives for your second
year
yeah yeah so um so we we already i
really did uh
my selection so
and hopefully i'll i'm planning to do uh
the entire 11 electives already i've
done
three in my first year i've done one in
my second year so i've selected uh
the remaining ones so and to be honest
so on the aspect of whether you should
go for a concentration or not so i don't
think you should stress yourself get
into consideration but there are
numerous uh electives so just uh
find electives that you think you really
need so in the process you might make a
concentration in in that making so i
don't think you should uh stress
yourself like i would want to do this
concentration but find courses that
you're really interested in and things
you will apply in the future and um
whose knowledge you think is will be
valuable for you so i think
yeah but to be honest uh
one of the key factors that made me
apply at lbs is uh
the wide scope of electives you've got
so where you kind of concentrate on a
particular aspect then you can
get
expertise in it so which is is very
valuable yeah
yeah i think that's an important thing
to point out the electives really allow
you to make the program your own and
it's very flexible you do the core
courses but once you've done those you
know you can really tailor the program
to be what you want it to be
um we have a question about the
opportunity to collaborate with students
from different programs at the school um
do either of you have any
examples or any experiences of this
yeah sure so if you just look at when
you start doing electives you're doing
electives with other programs so you'll
see
the majority of the electives i did um i
was in classes with mba students with
ember students so you do get exposure to
other programs and it's good because you
from
the core from the core courses you get
to know your your your myth class very
well but it's also good to get that
sense of knowing the other
the other um the other
classmates in the different programs so
you'll see like it's like i said it's a
function of the courses you take one of
the courses like i said um
was was part two power i wanted one of
the reasons for me doing the myth
program was to develop magnesium
potential hence i took parts to power
and that course is um predominantly
taken by embers and
from embers and mba so it was good just
to hear their thoughts on how they how
they got to where they are in terms of
their career paths and so forth
um negotiation and bargaining i was
exposed to different mba students and so
forth yeah so
the
electives are a chance for you to
interact with those society and um the
whole community of lbs and there's also
the aspect of societies where you also
engage and then some some lecturers um
they put you
they they put you in predetermined
groups
uh pre-determined study groups so you
will have exposure to other people and
in some cases you do find yourself
you're the only myth student in this
particular lecture so you do get
exposure
thank you
malcory do you have experience on that
from a part-time perspective
yeah sure yeah so again so a key part of
that is junior electives and
on your lectures because you've got
assignments where you're doing groups
that's the time where you really connect
with uh
like mba students ember because you're
from one group then once you're in a
group you'll build up a whatsapp chat
you'll conversate you know you undergo
assignments then from there you build a
relationship that will you can carry
forward uh even after you're done with
your specific elective but again there
are student clubs there are various
clubs where and
uh different events are
hosted by these clubs where people from
different courses uh meet up so that's
an opportunity again to to connect and
all that so
yeah so they have very
plenty of opportunities i've got friends
from mbas from different program
we've met in uh events lbs events we've
met in um maybe electives so yeah you've
got
various ways for you to connect here
and you both mentioned um the clubs and
societies could you just briefly um talk
about which clubs you joined
sure um wow
please when you when you when you do
start please take advantage there are so
many clubs and societies that's lbs
um so i think just the ones top of mind
i joined the africa club i was involved
in black and business club um the pe
club
so at the finance club because like i
said i was very much
i took finance um the masters in finance
because i wanted to support my knowledge
in finance so basically all the
different finance related clubs i was
pretty much involved in
and then just to sprinkle it because i
like things i was involved in the wine
club and you will see there's a there's
a reading club there's so many clubs
debating club because i wanted to make
sure i could articulate myself while
when i re-enter um
re-enter the workforce in terms of
negotiation and balkanic there's a whole
host of clubs and please take advantage
of it and that's also how you meet
different people
yeah they're a really great way for
networking throughout the school
and lastly malcory do you want to just
talk about any clubs you joined yeah so
i i just realized so i'm i've joined
similar clubs to nac so yeah
the finance club um
uh african club black and business but
an additional one is the investment
management club yeah so
and really the reason why i took most of
finance club and what's really
interesting is this club hosts guest
speakers some from different industries
different parts of the world so you get
an opportunity not only to hear from
these guest speakers but to network with
these guest speakers
that really increases your chances in
terms of uh getting if you want to uh
translate in a career maybe into
particular farms so you network with
these people and all that so so i highly
encourage you to to join as many clubs
as you can yeah
thank you
but i think we're almost out of time now
the next session will be a break before
the careers session so i just like to
thank you all so much for attending
thank you to everyone who um asks us
questions in the q a and a huge thank
you to anessa and malcroy thank you so
much for um giving up your time today
and um for sharing your stories with us
no worries no problem thank you
charlotte and thank you for people to
reach out if they have any questions
yeah
thank you both

---

### The Career Centre
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsW8ZXw-Q0c

Idioma: en

okay
hi everybody can uh we see the screen
okay
can we please make sure everyone's muted
because sometimes i get um an echo from
my mic peter can you give me the thumbs
up if everything's
okay great okay hi everybody and welcome
to the career center conversation uh
it's a sunny day here in london i'm not
sure where you're dialing in from but um
good evening to you or good morning
depending on where you are in the world
and so today i'm going to talk to you a
little bit about the career center for
about 15 minutes
and then we're going to have a q a
session which will be hosted
by peter johnson
christian can i give a quick
introduction to you if you'd like yeah
i would i've got it in front of me so
why don't i
so
uh hi again everybody it's our great
pleasure this afternoon
to be joined by my colleague christine
domet and christian has accumulated 27
years of finance experience
in banking and private equity
fundraising
with institutions including chase
manhattan the bank for international
settlements abbey national merrill lynch
and lgt capital partners
christian joined lbs in 2013
initially as the career lead for the
masters in finance
and now christian heads up the whole
career center
and supporting students and alumni from
all our masters programmes to achieve
their career goals
so back to you christian
thank you very much indeed peter
so um as peter said that is indeed my
biography i've been here almost nine
years now
and um an important part of my job as as
well as being head of the career center
is actually to be an executive director
of degree education and the reason i
mentioned that today is because i work
very closely with my colleagues in the
program office with my colleagues in
recruitment and admissions
my colleagues in experiential learning
and we come together together as a group
together with the support services team
to ensure that degree education
is well run but importantly from your
perspective it means that careers is
very much a part of the conversation at
lbs it's very much part of the
curriculum it's very much part of your
program and we work very closely
with our colleagues across the whole of
degree education to make sure
that you get what you need from a
careers perspective
in addition to myself
i have uh approximately 45 other
colleagues um who are permanent within
the career center um and they have a
variety of coaching and business
backgrounds which is incredibly
important uh from a you know these are
people who have been in uh finance of
hackers and finance and indeed other
areas of business i can talk to you uh
literally from their own experience as
to what it's like
and how it is that you can gain access
to those various sectors and i'll come
onto those in a second
um we sort of divide our work into a few
areas of program coaching employment
sectors and professional development and
i'll talk a little bit about uh what it
is that we offer in just a second
we also have
90 peer leaders 90 to 100 in any given
year that we
identify train recruit and pay ourselves
and to support you along your journey
and these are predominantly second year
mbas i noticed there was a question
about
do we do we work with other classes at
all and and certainly from an mba
perspective you get the benefit of
students who have just recently done an
internship or have previously worked in
another sector who can talk to you about
what that's like so that's an incredible
that's an incredibly important part of
our work
and then of course we have many external
coaches and advisors who come in and
support our work as well so we pretty
much have every angle covered that we
need to cover
and of course in these covered
constrained times we are both available
in person if you're wearing a mask and
online
so in terms of those were our human
resources we also have
digital resources if you are
dialing into us online or you just need
to get an answer to a question when the
physical office is closed
we have a 24 7
jobs board many jobs from across the
whole of finance but also other sectors
of course we have our own blog where we
share a lot of insights and alumni um
case studies which are incredibly uh
valuable to certain people who are
looking for inspiration as to how to
make their next move
and then we have our own textbook on how
to write cvs how to write cover letters
how to be interviewed
information about sectors um on our
careers on canvas course which we're
constantly updating and of course we
have access access to many external uh
online career resources as well so we're
like a a mini
um career center in the sense that we
cover every aspect of careers um for you
and you have access to that at all times
but in terms of how we
set ourselves up in terms of the offer
to you the students and i think this is
incredibly important there are four key
aspects to our work one is um career
coaching and advising which is your
opportunity to sit down with somebody
and just talk about your options you
might well come here with a very clear
plan in mind but we would always urge
you to explore beyond that plan not just
because you may or may not be successful
in that particular plan but because
throughout your career you will
encounter many ups and downs um and
understanding what it is that you have
to offer and what other areas have to
offer you uh will be incredibly valuable
so you mustn't just think about career
center as your post graduation role but
also what you can learn from a career
perspective for the rest of your career
will be incredibly important
um in addition to the coaching and
advising
we give career learning workshops
where we help you write your cv in in a
way that uh our recruiters understand we
help you write cover letters um we help
you with interview techniques um and we
run many other workshops beside these
but these are the ones that are
obviously the most obvious and most
popular but many workshops including
how to deal with resilience how to deal
with ambiguities so on and so forth so
many different things that you can be
involved in from a career center
perspective and then of course we have
career and networking opportunities
we have significant on-campus
recruitment
that's just starting up again obviously
post-covered
although a lot of our recruiters did
switch to online and a lot of them have
chosen to stay online and they're still
considered as on-campus recruiters
because they are they are exclusively
coming to lbs for opportunities that
they discuss with you they might well go
to other schools but they don't
share generally um sessions with other
schools when they come and see us so
this is your opportunity to spend time
with recruiters ask them questions uh
meet with them um and then obviously
apply for roles through the jobs board
we also do a lot of
other networking opportunities including
with alumni
and we also put on we also support the
club treks as well either organizing
meetings with those with companies
abroad uh again either online or or in
person so there's a there's a lot of
opportunity to to see opportunities to
explore opportunities but also to meet
with people and then finally we underpin
everything with career insights seeing
the insights that we've gained
throughout our careers
um and indeed finding out what's going
on in the market at any given point in
time so that you've got up-to-date
information which will help you navigate
the various options that are available
to you
now i put here a generic slide that we
have
of many of the companies that come on
campus
and the one thing i would cancel here as
i and i will go on to explain in the
next slide is that you'll notice on the
left hand side there are a number of
consulting firms
listed i need to
give you a word of caution here
if you're looking to move into
consulting you should be considering an
mba or other program rather than masters
in finance the consultants generally do
not hire masters in finance students
they're not they come to business school
to hire mbas
of course that doesn't mean to say there
aren't opportunities for finance
students within consultants uh it's just
that they're much harder to find and
those particular companies don't come to
london business school specifically with
that in mind so i think i need to make
that clear whereas obviously the banks
the asset managers clearly know and
understand what the masters and finances
and come here and that's our bread and
butter business
but there are also finance opportunities
in many other organizations such as the
diversified sectors in technology
companies um
in energy companies and so on and so
forth and indeed if you look at where
the outcomes of the the last masters in
finance full-time class was
um you know
unsurprisingly 77 of the class
went into the finance sector 10 went
into diversified 10 went into technology
and only 3 went into consulting and even
within the consulting that would
predominantly be sort of big four type
organizations as as opposed to the
strategy consultants
um but nonetheless 90 percent of the
class secured a role within three months
of graduation and many others obviously
the other remaining 10 found their
opportunity shortly thereafter we don't
collect stats for the part-time class
because you're in work when you
actually come and join the program
but everything that we've said about
what's available to
students is also available to part-time
students with a slight caveat that many
of the recruiters are looking for
students who are not in work at the
present time although many recruiters do
obviously uh keep an open mind as to who
it is that they employ so there are some
slight nuances but we can probably cover
those off in the q a
so i think that's just about it i think
that pretty much covered everything i
can from a high level but i'm sure there
are many art questions that you'll have
uh that hopefully i'll be able to answer
um and i pass over to peter for those
absolutely thank you christian that's a
really useful high level run through um
a couple of questions already um looking
at the work of the career center
how does it differ
for between the myth and the mba
and um
is there a fundamental difference in
career
trajectories
broadly speaking between the myth and
the mba programs
yeah i mean yeah i think yes or no is
the answer to that question i mean
obviously
the um
the mba is a two-year program where the
master's in finance is a one-year
program albeit you have the option to
take a fourth term and we introduce that
fourth um so that um sorry could you
just meet your mic peter i'm talking um
so the uh we introduced the fourth term
so that masters and finance students
full-time students could actually take
an internship um while they were on the
course so actually to bring it much more
in line with an mba that enables
students who want to transition
from one aspect of finance to another or
indeed from a non-finance role into a
finance role
so to speak
so
other than that everything that's on
offer to um
to mba students is on offer to masters
and finance students i've seen a much
more compressed time frame because
they're here for a shorter period of
time um but i would say and this is
really important that people understand
this before they come on the program the
masters in finance is a very specialist
very niche uh program it's a very high
quality finance program
and not all recruiters will have heard
of the masters in finance when you come
they'll all develop around business
school and the london business school
stamp of approval on your cv will be
what grabs their attention but they may
or may not have heard of the masters in
finance
and uh there's very little we can do
about it they they chop and change their
recruiters the whole time whereas
everybody tends to know what an mba is
so that doesn't actually
cause as many problems as you might
think it does
but it does give consternation amongst
the student body from time to time
because they think it's the masters in
finance that's the key thing where in
fact it's the london business school
standard of approval which is the key
thing and also what's really important
is mindset
so really recruiters are hiring
individuals they're not hiring um
they're not hiring sort of uh degree
monikers if you like and they come to
lbs because they know they're gonna get
high quality people um and they'll
recognize that a finance degree from a
top institution it's it's incredibly
valuable
um but you know i think the important
thing to know here is is that what they
really want is people who
who who uh understand what it is that
they are looking for and are able to
converse and speak their language
thanks christian christian um there's
been a couple of people in an earlier
session and now
who are asking
how
much
the career center can support people
whose aspirations are outside the uk
and so maybe they're moving back to
their own region or indeed trying to
make make a move into another market
like the us or latam so what kind of
support can be given both for full-time
roles and for internships
yeah so that varies so um a lot will
depend on visa status is the first thing
so if you're returning to your home
market obviously that's relatively
straightforward
what we don't support is visa
applications and so on and so forth and
there are certain markets where visas
are required
and we encourage students to
to do their own research in terms of
what visas are required for various
markets because that's not something
that we do provide i just need to make
that caveat to start with um that said
we um we work in many countries across
the the globe and we we do that in in a
couple of ways so the the most important
way i think is we work very closely with
the student clubs and we support
international student tracks
so that will be for example the banking
or the asset management private equity
trek to to new york we'll set up
meetings in new york and we'll spend
time with the students
over there we support the silicon valley
track for people who want to go and work
in technology in silicon valley for
example
uh and we do those in various other you
know we do private equity tracks in
china you know we do those acro across
the world and we get heavily involved in
those uh our employee engagement team
also do outreach to countries um to
companies in various countries and in
some regions we actually have our own
individual consultants who support our
work in those particular countries we
also have access to significant online
resources that have information about
opportunities in global markets um so
yes so students are as well supported as
they are in the uk having said that on
the jobs board that we have um
the that we host
clearly uh most of our jobs are going to
be in the uk
because there's no particular reason why
a company in china would want to
necessarily go and post a job on the
london business school jobs board
because there's only a small number of
students that they'll be looking at
relative to the populations that they
can get in their own local market so
that is the significant difference most
of the job opportunities will be
advertised in local markets uh we do
have a large number of international
jobs but i just want to make sure that
the caveat is out there in terms of um
you know the on-campus recruitment isn't
everything it should never be more than
any uh it should never be more than 20
of anybody's strategy in terms of uh the
types of jobs that they're looking at
great i think naturally following on
from that is um
we all talk about networking all the
time as if it's a
given what we're actually talking about
and i know you have very strong views on
this and really great advice on this
christian i've learned a lot from you on
the whole networking question so maybe
we just give people a flavor of when
we're talking about networking what does
good networking look like
well i can spend hours on networking we
have we have many modules and um one of
those first things we encourage you to
do when you join lbs is to look at the
networking module on canvas which myself
and colleagues together with faculty put
together
and we draw upon all of the expertise of
faculty to to substantiate everything
that we say about networking because
it's incredibly important so
networking is predominantly about
relationship building it's not about
finding a job that's the most important
thing you need to remember
and networking is all about finding out
information and leaving
an impression with somebody and if you
leave a good impression with someone the
chances are they'll pass that good
impression onto somebody else
and somehow or other your name will get
passed on through the market such that
when somebody has a role that's right
for you
you they get they then get in touch with
you so it's more let the job find you
that you find the job and it's very easy
for me to say this because i've got a
job
but uh and it's quite hard to do when
you're a student and you've got a
student loan to repay and you need a job
but the reality is networking is needs
to be started very early
but it has to be done professionally and
i think
the most important thing about
networking is
treat it as a relationship
uh be very respectful don't expect
everybody to come back to you
and be prepared to share insights and
leave a good impression and we will
work very much with students in terms of
helping them craft their message
uh so that when they do go out and
network they do leave a good impression
and they take good thoughts with them so
that they can have a meaningful meeting
and indeed someone will then be willing
to help them um
the last thing i would say on that is is
that you know
finding finding a job through networking
is actually quite difficult because
the the
the instinctive thing to to do is just
apply to try network with people that
you know are hiring
and actually
the smarter thing is to network with
people who aren't hiring and then get
introduced to the people who are hiring
through the network because that
increases your chance of them being able
to source a job that's proprietary to
you that isn't advertised to the wider
market
and then you get a free run on and
actually you end up getting a much
better fitting job as well so these are
all things that we'll work with students
on but be prepared to network uh be
open-minded about it it's not as
difficult as you might think it is i
know there are many cultures that it's
alien to
um but it is expected in this market um
and it reaps dividends and it's
particularly valuable um if you're
open-minded as to what it is that you do
next because it's when you talk to
people that you gather ideas about what
else it is that you can do with your
career rather than just focus on that
one thing that you thought you always
wanted to do but you might not be able
to do for whatever reason or you end up
doing it you think hang on this isn't
what i expected
great yeah and i've learned so much from
you on networking absolutely um
looking ahead
um can you talk a bit about
how the school supports alumni
you know two five ten twenty years out
of the program
because that's really quite unique in
terms of um
the level of support we offer i think
relative to other top schools
yeah so we have um we're very blessed we
have we have an alumni career center at
lbs it's run by a truly fantastic
individual maureen deutsch
um and she works very closely with our
advancement team who generally look
after alumni relations um you're
entitled to two free coaching sessions a
year once you become an alumnus of the
school uh you have access to the job
sport at all times
and um if you build a good relationship
with the career center during your time
here we'll likely remember you and
actually look out for you anyway and be
available to you one-on-one if we can be
if resources allow
once you once you've graduated
we we also provide a curriculum for our
alumni so there are webinars and
workshops available
when we used to be able to fly around
the world which hopefully we will be
able to do again soon
myself and colleagues used to go and
give workshops on leadership skills for
example
uh and job search skills and so on and
so forth so you know it for us um one of
the reasons we do this is because we
want you to be successful as alumni
obviously but equally we want you to
come back and actually share
um your experiences once you become an
alum with our future students in the
same way that you would like the current
alumni to help and support you so it's
it's very much a connected community
from our perspective
i made it my number one priority when i
became head of the career center that
actually we were going to focus on
improving our alumni uh offering
and uh we've improved it enormously and
we continue to improve it
and the school recognizes is that
there's a key area in an investment as
well
great i'm gonna ask you to get out your
crystal ball now and um
give a sense of what you think the major
trends might be in uh new finance
sectors
so what are we going to see more of and
what might we
come to see less of in the coming period
yeah i think
that is a very tricky question to answer
and i think you know actually the best
way to have this conversation is to get
everybody in the room and get
get all of your thoughts as well as as
as well as my own
and you know
finance jobs go in jobs going cycles so
i spent 27 years in in finance and i
think i got made redundant three times
so and i say that
um and because you need to understand
that you know things will happen to you
in your career that you are not
expecting to have happen to you which is
why it's very important that while
you're here at london business school
you do consider a wide range of
opportunities and you and you
build up a network as quickly as you
possibly can
so
um in terms of what
what's hot what's not the moment
investment banking is back uh it went
through a bit of a lull in the past uh
but it's back uh markets is is generally
down it's very difficult to get um into
associate roles into markets at the
moment so investment banking is
obviously all the m a piece the markets
is the trading type of opportunities
they're much more difficult
um asset management uh
you know it has always been difficult to
get into but we always get a fair share
of our students to get in there
partly because like private equity
turnover is very low and of course
within asset management there's a big
move to passive at the moment from
active
and therefore there's less demand for
active fund managers um and then
obviously fintech is is a big area uh
although within fintech actually uh
they're looking for
you know a lot of software developers as
well as finance people
um so you know
and again you know within within big4 i
would say you know lots of opportunities
uh to do all of the aspects of finance
and not just auditing but m a
opportunities private equity and so on
and so forth um
are there i mean
finance to me will always be
uh there will always be a large number
of finance jobs and great demand for for
skilled finance professionals um for for
whatever reason
um
many people are afraid to think and talk
and articulate finance
which means that if you've actually got
a very good grasp of the subject
through a degree at a place like london
business school where you're going to
learn from probably the best finance
faculty in the world
your
you will be able to turn your hands to
most financial opportunities throughout
the world um obviously the the role of
the cfo also is is changing quite
significantly
and one of the things that we've tried
to do over the last few years
is improve the the um the training that
we do in terms of the ability to move
into a cfo type
or finance directive type role
simply because it's much more than just
finance
so in addition to everything that you
learn in finance on uh on the masters in
finance you have all the um what we call
the soft skills professional development
curriculum but which is incredibly
valuable because if you want to be a
good cfo you need to be able to
communicate
um and so these are things that we can't
ignore and indeed if you think about
investment banking it's the same a lot
of investment banking is about
relationship building and relationship
management not just about finance so i
generally don't like to think too much
about you know where are the hot jobs
today
because as i said they they wax and
wayne
and i think you know the important thing
is to have a broad skill set um some
special some especially some specialism
in one or two areas
but be open-minded and be able to use
your skill set in a transferable way and
yeah
we can help you with that i've worked in
three or four different areas of finance
both back office and front office i've
done relationship management
jobs i've done
i've done trading jobs i've done
fundraising jobs i've done investment
jobs
um and
you've just got to have a passion for
finance and you'll be fine it doesn't
matter where the jobs are you'll find
something and you'll find something that
suits you and you'll find something that
you can turn into something really
magnificent because it's a great area to
work
and i think one of the interesting
things christian as well is that
how often people end up in an area which
wasn't on their agenda wasn't in their
sights
and maybe even um they weren't really
even aware that it was a thing that it
was a kind of role or a finance
um a finance job
and so much of that comes from
interaction of classmates interactions
with alumni as well
so i totally echo your point is you need
a plan on the way in
because if you don't have that plan
you really start in a way that can be
very unfocused
but you need to have a plan and be
prepared to depart from it
to take other opportunities along the
way
yeah i can can i just answer that i
think
and
i think it's important to have a
foundation in terms of where you're
going to start your search because that
helps you get the ball rolling
um but it's very important as you say to
keep an open mind and don't necessarily
call that plan your plan a
just call it you know your starting
point
because
the reality is is that there are many
options that are open to you many of
which you
you don't i won't understand today or
won't be aware of um but
the likelihood is there's an opportunity
out there that you'll have never ever
thought about which will be better than
the plan your starting plan
and as you say peter many students have
gone on to do many different things
other than where they thought they were
going to go and what they thought they
were going to do and they've gone on to
have really great careers
um there's a related question here from
our pets is um
understanding what sessions we have with
students once they have an offer
and to set their expectations and give
them advice on
how to best plan how to get the most out
the resources
and on this i would say um
on the admissions committee which
christian has sat in on the past
and your employment aspirations always
form a really significant part of our
decision making
um we want people to have ultimately to
have successful careers
and it's one of the ways
one of the most significant ways in
which
the program is evaluated internally and
externally is those and career outcomes
so christian maybe you could say a bit
about
how we get people up to speed
before the program starts and then once
the program is underway particularly
perhaps focusing on the full-time myth
yeah so i mean we'll have we'll have a
number of webinars which will
effectively introduce you to how to
prepare for your masters in finance but
i can give you a few clues now
um
you know there's plenty of careers
resources
um
available to you on the on the web right
now um what does the investment banker
do what does an asset manager do what
skills do i need
just look at
some of the
e-financial careers or something like
that and just pull off job descriptions
of what investment bankers do or what
asset managers do
to get a real sense
of of what that's like so that
most of the prep you can do today is to
just look at jobs and try and understand
what jobs are because
you know in the past i've seen too many
people apply to the program saying i
want to work for goldman sachs i want to
be an investment banker and really you
know when they get interviewed by an
alumnus it turns out that they don't
really know what investment bank
actually does or how that operates or
what the role actually entails so
it's all very well having great
aspirations but make sure that they're
rooted
in your in in good knowledge and i would
urge you to do that before you apply for
the program rather than you know apply
for the program hope the best and then
think you're going to wing it when you
get here because that's what will give
you the greatest start because if you
start in from that point of view as soon
as you start learning what a banker does
or an asset manager does or any other
aspect of finance i'm just picking on
those two
because they have to be the most popular
but once you once you've got that you
then actually start to think oh and i
wonder which firms get involved and then
you start getting involved in the firms
and then you start thinking oh so if an
asset management if an asset manager
spends most of their time talking to
companies what is it they need to know
about companies and again you know i
i've i've
spent too many times in mock interviews
with people who say they want to be an
asset manager and they don't even follow
companies if you don't follow companies
it's going to be very difficult for you
to be an asset manager so we will give
you all of these pointers once you're
enrolled onto the program uh probably in
may or june or something like that
before you come on the program but
almost that's almost kind of too late
you need to be starting out work now
before you apply for this program be
really clear as to why you want to be an
asset manager or a banker or a private
equity professional or an auditor or a
cfo whatever it is you want to do be
really clear in your in your essay to
peter and the team
and um you know and don't just put down
i want to work with goldman sachs
because so does everybody else and
they they employ from us they hire from
us
um but they don't want a hundred people
from lbs i can guarantee you that and so
they certainly don't want 600.
so so yeah i think you know we we we
will be there to support you in any way
that we can i think also we encourage
you to use the
lbs cd template when you apply for the
program peter is that is that still
correct
absolutely and it's on the website and
downloadable as part of the application
form as well
so you actually get you can actually get
something for free there even if you
don't get to come on the program because
the lbs format cv
if you get that right can stand you in
an extremely good stead in in sort of
learning how to uh portray yourself
that makes it a lot easier for us to
understand who's right for the program
who's not
and just to say that template does isn't
just a template saying it should look
like this it's got a series of notes
attached to it and very much the
emphasis is what we see a lot is people
submitting sending us cds that are very
much about their functional role
and the format we suggest is much more
focused on achievements
so it's a really good reflection point
as part of the preparation for applying
to the myth and partly just generally in
your career planning is
taking that time to reflect on your
achievements not just the job titles in
sequence
um moving on
before you ask the next question can i
just ask myself a question
yes do you make a comment sorry i
noticed that we we focused a lot on the
on the full time so far i don't know how
many people are on the court but are
interested in the part time but i just
want to make a point um you know
everything that we do in the career
center is focused on all students so
it's not just for the full time and
part-time students have access the same
amount of access obviously but at
different points because they're working
during the day
um so we try and make ourselves
available in the evening and so on and
so forth so that the part-time students
can get access to what they need there
is a specific point though that if
you're looking to transition your career
it's very difficult to do an internship
as a part-time student and therefore you
should think seriously about whether you
need to be on the full time or the
part-time program if that's what you're
looking to do and the recruitment
admissions team can support you
uh in your thinking around that
and if necessary they might even refer
you to someone within careers to get
a more definitive answer
but if you are looking to transition um
and you think you might need to do an
internship and be able to do that just
please bear in mind that you would have
to resign your job um from
whatever it is you're doing while you're
on the part-time program then do an
internship with all the inherent risks
that come with that in the sense it may
or may not convert or lead to a
full-time job so i just wanted to put
that in there for those that are
thinking of doing that
but we will nonetheless support you in
whatever it is that you're trying to
achieve with your career goals whether
you're on the full-time or the part-time
program
really important point yes thanks for
that um the dreaded word brexit
we thought we'd all forgotten about that
but um
do you think the job markets got tougher
in london after brexit
what sort of um
fallout do you think we can now see
after a rather longer period of brexit
post-brexit yeah i've never seen brexit
as a problem myself and for one very
good reason um
many years ago in fact in 96 and 97 i
used to live in hong kong
and when hong kong transitioned from
british rule to chinese rule there was
big concern that hong kong uh words
would wither on the vine that shanghai
would become a much bigger financial
center
that hong kong 30 years down the road
would have no place in the world now
notwithstanding the fact that hong kong
has a number of local difficulties at
the moment which i'm not trying to gloss
over hong kong is still a thriving
finance city and probably is thriving
more on the chinese world than the
british rule because it still remains a
significant gateway to china
and the reason i made that point is that
um
everyone was saying the same about
brexit that once we left europe
effectively london would lose its role
as the preeminent financial center
in europe or indeed the world
and everything would go to harrison
and frankfurt well
i mean i know paris and frankfurt well i
particularly like paris as a place but i
wouldn't want to work there and i
wouldn't want to work there because um
london has
enormous cultural value and has and i'm
not saying paris doesn't have it on this
cultural value don't get me wrong but it
has more it specifically has
multicultural value
um and it also has a much broader
business base than either paris or
frankfurt and it's also has it also has
significant human capital
which paris and frankfurt don't have
because it's so much more broadly based
and in fact hong kong has the same in
the asia region that other other cities
don't have
and that human capital is incredibly
important and it's the human capital
which enables uh finance to grow and to
thrive
and that is why london is number one and
will remain number one
in my view
post-brexit uh interestingly the rules
have also changed to benefit
non-european students um that doesn't
mean to say europeans that are a
significant disadvantage they just don't
have the same right to work in the same
way that they used to
um but the rules have been leveled in
terms of other nationalities we've also
introduced a new uh post graduation
two-year work visa which means that you
no longer have to be sponsored to work
in the uk after completing your masters
in finance
so you can go straight to work
for you for any institution based in
london or anywhere else in the uk for
that matter without having to get
sponsorship which actually is a
significant bonus um so i see london
thriving
it will uh continue to thrive we had a
small lull when brexit when the vote
first happened there was a bit of period
of uncertainty but after people realized
that it was actually no big deal uh
people got on with that and actually
every crisis throws up opportunities
and you know that's one of the great
things about the uk and london is it's a
very entrepreneurial uh culture um and
new opportunities are
being thrown up all all the time you
know fintech was born out of the
2007-2008 financial crisis and i dare
say there will be many interesting
technologies and opportunities that come
out of the postcovid virtual world
crisis as as we change and evolve
and you know a changing world is is a
normal world candidly there's never been
a time where the world hasn't been
changing for one reason or another
whether it's brexit whether it's stock
market crashes whether it's global
financial crisis whether it's an all
price war whatever it is uh throughout
history there are many things that have
been inflicted on the uk economy and
indeed on the global economy and yet
somehow they continue to be jobs at the
moment there are more vacancies in the
uk than there have ever been on record
that was just announced this week
yes and absolutely david and i touched
on this in the first session is saying
um
one of the advantages of being a very
autonomous institution um is that we can
be very agile and as finance is changing
as kind of areas come up come down new
whole new areas arrive we've been able
to be very quickly responsive
and to
teach our students in those areas
because we've got that wealth for
faculty faculty experts teas to be able
to do so
on that point peter we used to have one
person dedicated to technology when i
joined london business school we now
have three and one of those people
is dedicated to fintech
yeah absolutely and they spend all of
their time you know silicon roundabouts
and so forth we you know we run all the
tracks to silicon valley and so and so
forth so you know that's a very good
example of how we've responded to change
um and we continue to do so across all
areas of finance and indeed across all
sectors of the economy
um last question i'm going to pose to
you today and apologies for anybody who
we didn't get to
but um
maybe a bit about how um a recruiter
perception of the myth versus the nba
and um
i think the question really is about
is there an innate disadvantage there
or is there maybe an advantage in being
on a
highly specialist program
yeah so i kind of alluded to this in the
first question that i answered and i
think you know yes yes and no is the
advantage so there's a perceived
disadvantage from the student
perspective they say no one's heard of
them if everyone's heard of the nba well
that's normal because the nba is a
ubiquitous program that's offered
globally uh all being at different
levels of quality in my view um and the
masters in finance in terms of its rigor
is in my view the best masters and
fairness program in the world it's
certainly ranked number one by the
financial times and it is certainly far
more rigorous than all of the early
early careers programs that it often
gets confused with and i'm not going to
beat about the bush on that one but
nevertheless
people don't hire degrees
yeah they hire people
so it comes down to the individual and
the mindset of the individual and how
they think about how they position
themselves in the market the reality is
that anybody who comes and does a
master's in finance program is doing a
highly specialist finance program that's
going to give them a very broad
understanding of all aspects of finance
which is going to give make them a very
consumer finance professional
whether or not anyone's heard of that
program knows that program isn't
important what's important is that
they've been to london business school
which is the number one place to study
finance in the world in my view so um
with that in mind when they go into the
job market they shouldn't be worrying
about whether they're doing they've been
studying a masters in finance or an mba
they should be focused on what they can
offer that company and why what they've
learned on the program can help them
make an impact to that organization and
we support the students in crafting
those stories such that they can do that
and we teach them how we encourage
students to network we show them how to
network um and there are many proud myth
alumni who are willing to hire myth and
there are many proud uh myth alumni who
are willing to support me if they can't
hire them so it's it's a very unique um
subset of people in my view
and it's a very special community
whether you're on the part-time or the
full-time program uh and an alumnus of
such um and i think you know there
there's a lifetime of really incredible
opportunities for people who come and
study this program
right we've got time for one final
question
and can you give it a sense of um
how
we can support somebody who's maybe more
experienced 10 years and above
and maybe you and i can discuss
um after that um really whether this is
the right program for somebody who has
more senior experience and whether
perhaps something like the executive mba
is a better fit for more experienced
candidates
well it comes down to what the
individual is trying to achieve candidly
so
um
if if you're if your aspiration
on coming to this program is to just get
a post-graduation job in investment
banking or asset management
um to be honest you have to be
30 31 years old max to be able to do
that um and i'm not being ageist about
that that's that's the fact of life and
the reason it's a fact of life
is because
the entry point to those organizations
is is at that level it's the associate
level and they're not going to hire
someone who's say 38 years old
into that type of job you know whatever
they say about their their open policies
uh and their lack of age discrimination
they'll look at someone's experience and
say that's not a suitable opening for us
and so
joining um
making a career transition at a much
older age is far is far more difficult
and and therefore the job opportunities
that you're going to find are going to
be very different to the job
opportunities that on-campus recruitment
will throw up
now that doesn't mean say career centre
can't help you because we obviously work
with executive mbas and we work with
sloanes who are working professionals
and we work with
many myth part-time students who have a
lot of experience and for them the job
search is very different the job search
is much more about
um
networking talking to people and
unearthing opportunities where you can
make an impact because you have
experience in areas that hitherto you
didn't think would be of value to people
because they're not a specialist in
another area
and we'll help you and we support
students and you support alumni
with that type of work so it's a
different type of use of the career
center for those people who are just
using it so
there's a more transactional i'll come
i'll come to london business school i'll
get on an associate program you know i'm
28 years old you know i've worked for
five years in a particular area i've got
the right experience but be warned i
mean just because you've got an
experience in one area doesn't give you
a guarantee that you're going to be
rehired in the same area
uh oftentimes organizations are looking
for people who are making a transition
who bring a different skill set and
while bringing diversity into their
ranks
um and i have a saying particularly
about private equity that i've seen the
most
likely people fail to get into private
equity and i've seen the most unlikely
people succeed and in the end it comes
down to mindset and storytelling and
story crafting and i'm working hard on
being realistic about what it is you can
achieve there's no such thing and this
is my final word i think
there's no such thing
about the right as the right background
when you're making a career transition
your background is what your background
is you can't do anything about it uh all
you can do is look into your background
and think what is it that i have done
that's going to make me successful
somewhere else whatever that is and
90 percent of jobs candidly don't
require you to have significant
technical expertise they do expect they
might
within finance you do need broad finance
expertise which is what you'll get on
the masters in finance but there are
very there are very few jobs in the
world that require specific technical
expertise and obviously
you're not going to become a brain
surgeon if you spent your life being a
financier but you can move within the
world of finance very easily just by
drawing on broad finance experience just
by drawing on all the experiences you've
had in many countries with many
different types of people and crafting a
story and being very clear about what
your style of leadership is and how you
think about the world and what kind of
impact that you can make and that's
that's where we spend most of our time
the job sport candidly is is a small
subset of that uh all of our expertise
is really in helping you craft stories
having the belief to go out there
and really
and really hit the job market in a way
that's going to make you successful
whether the jobs advertise here or
whether it's never been advertised and
actually it's a job that's created
because you're the right person for it
fantastic christian thanks so much for
sharing your time and your insights this
afternoon and i hope everybody i'm sure
everybody who's taken part will find it
useful and just to remind you we will be
sending out transcripts of this a few
days after the event
so you can go back and ponder further on
some of the insight that christian has
shared but for now christian enjoy the
rest of your weekend i'll see you next
week
and for everybody else we're taking a
short break now and we'll start back
again at
15 35.

---

### Alumni Panel
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lloh_UebOY

Idioma: en

good afternoon everyone and welcome to
the final session
of today's masters in finance open day
for those of you who weren't at one of
the earliest sessions
let me just introduce myself again i'm a
peter johnson
i'm the senior admissions manager of the
program
and i've worked on the myth since we
launched the full-time program
back in 1994
and i have a great pleasure
in this final session
to be joined by three of our excellent
alumni
so i'm going to get them to
introduce themselves and do all the hard
work of answering your questions as we
uh finalize this afternoon so then
so uh peter do you want to go first tell
us a bit about
where you're from where you were before
the myth
and where the myth has taken you now
uh hello everyone i'm
originally from india i was born and
brought up in mumbai i did my chartered
accountancy course i did my
undergraduate management studies with my
cfa
worked in deloitte india for a bit and
then came to london in 2018 to do my
masters in finance from lbs and that is
undoubtedly one of the best decisions
that i could have taken for my personal
and professional life uh i've been
working with alliance bernstein at their
concentrated global growth fund since
2018 now so about a year and a half
there work in public equities as an
investment analyst and
that's about it
great thank you ted you want to go next
sure thank you peter my name is
sangeetha madhavan um i grew up in new
york was born in india but moved to the
u.s when i was pretty young i did my
undergrad at nyu worked with morgan
stanley for about four years and then in
2019 joined the myth program full-time
in london and then again as i forgot
mentioned as well one of the best um
career decisions i think i could have
made and currently with charles schwab
in the client services side with a focus
on wealth management
fantastic and
last but not least james
thanks peter can you hear me yep
yep good good hi i'm james crombee i am
australian i was born in western
queensland
lived in brisbane for a while
um worked for uh ey then a hedge fund in
australia um did started the myth in
2015 um which was as our peter said
probably one of the best decisions i
ever made both personally and
professionally
um i worked for a european activist
hedge fund for four years after
graduating and launched my own fund
about two years ago um public equities
and quite a long short all the way so
yeah happy to answer any questions you
may have
great so there's no presentation for
this session everything is down to q a
and so i'm going to kick off um
looking
back to your journey it's always kind of
quite a hard decision
um whether to do the myth or the nba
and particularly when there are other
options like
cfa
there
and maybe change you could kick off on
that what was your kind of
thought process when you were choosing
um
which was the better program and even
which was the right school for it and
ultimately are you happy with the
decision that you made
um
those are really good questions and and
obviously healing quite a lot
um as for the um myth and the mba
i
i'd already done an undergraduate in
finance um i'd worked in finance and
worked in a hedge fund um i was most of
the way through the cfa program at the
time um so i was looking for something a
bit more hands-on
cfa is great but it's
basically sit as a hermit
library for
six months no one challenges you on
anything you do you come out thinking
you're a genius you're quite offended
when you're not
so
uh
the reason i wanted to go back to a more
collaborative learning environment was
um because there'd be the opportunity to
debate ideas and um there's some very
robust um very very informative uh
debates from people with real experience
in these uh
in these fields and in the topics we
were talking about so that was the first
one um as opposed to nba um i've i've
been trying for seven years i think to
get um the nba renamed to the myth light
um unsuccessfully i might add but um
we're getting there we're getting there
um but yeah basically the myth goes a
lot deeper than the nba does into
finance and having interviewed um a lot
of lbs grads
i can tell you that mbas like on the
surface know the same things as the
myths do the myths know them in just so
much greater detail and you can really
push them on topics so
that's extremely useful um
and i think if if you wanted to go into
anything that was like an operational
focus or
anything that's not like heavily
involved in finance probably the mba is
for you but if you're in finance and you
want to accelerate your career then
smith is definitely the one for you
absolutely um sangeeta do you want to
share your reflections
on myth or mba
sure so for me personally um similar to
james as well having worked in finance i
sort of knew i wanted to stay in that
field itself so i think the biggest
decision was sort of what i wanted to do
there so i came in with like quite
literally a couple pieces of paper with
different options and different career
paths and so with that i was trying to
look for an efficient path that also let
me network and kind of transition so i
was in finance at morgan stanley wanted
to move more towards the client side and
wealth management um so knowing that i
wanted that trying to find elements of
the myth especially with some of the
concentrations we had some of the
specific targeted core classes it's like
an efficient route to get to where you
need to go
in less time as well so it overall just
made more sense for me personally
knowing that i had a kind of career path
lined up with what i wanted to do and i
think the exams are great i mean they'll
give you leverage and obviously it's
always good to have more credentials
but i think you miss out on the
networking and also a name like london
business school that's globally known
not just in one country but around the
world ads benefit adds credibility to
you and then opens up so many new doors
that maybe just applying on a career
website with a cfa may not um so that
was probably the the biggest uh decision
maker for me between them if in an mba
and uh peter
it's always the hardest to be last
because it's the the uh
probably everybody said everything you
want to say already but um well tell us
a bit about your decision-making between
myth and mba
so i'm not going to repeat what james
and sangeetha
already mentioned and that largely
formed my part of the decision making as
well i knew i wanted to specialize in
finance didn't want to do the basics of
marketing supply chain human resources
which i had done in my undergraduate
management studies uh but apart from
that i've done the charter accountancy
course and the cfa and one question that
i often get from students who reach out
prospective students who reach out to me
is that if they've already done the ca
or the cfa does the myth still make
sense and from my experience it makes
100 sense because i learned so much from
the myth despite having done two
professional qualifications and finance
and when it comes to the decision
between mba and myth uh so yes if you
want to specialize in finance you could
do the mba and you could take up more
finance electives as well but one thing
you should keep in mind is that miff
takes a shorter duration of time so you
can do the myth in 10 months or 16
months and the mba takes 15 months 18
months or 21 months plus the myth is if
you're thinking about from from an roi
perspective miff costs half the half of
what the mba costs so while i was
recruiting at lbs i had other mbas who
were trying to apply for the same
positions that i was applying at and uh
i mean we're doing a course that takes
the shorter duration that is cheaper
you're spending less while living in
london as a student and you're still
getting this paid the same salary so for
me with a no-brainer
absolutely and for finance people
focusing in on that
cost and roi question is always critical
i've been pondering this for many years
and actually i think my take on this is
that um
if you think of a similar kind of
life-changing experience which might be
moving house
or moving job or buying a house
i think if
sensible organized people will always
have a list of things that matter to
them
and that might be weighted you know it
might be very much about
the culture of where a kind of the
culture of the school that you're
studying or the nature of the city you
know you might prefer
out of city location to um
something very inner city like lbs
but write all of those things down
and as objectively as you can
score every program that you're looking
at against that set of criteria
because i think that's a good way into
it if you're like me you do that very
much as a sort of brain exercise
and then you make the heart decision
because you've decided you just want one
more than the other
but actually running through that
process is just a good way to stretch
your thoughts
and i think my final observation is that
if you spend maybe two or three months
um
trying to decide and you still can't
decide then logically you should be
opting for an mba
because
it just gives you those greater range of
options but if you're really career a
clear as all that all the alumni have
said that it's finance you want
then masters in finance will very often
be by far the best option for you
sorry this is supposed to be an alumni
panel not me
sharing my insights but um just slightly
moving on from that
maybe um let's start with sangeeta
talk a bit about the
more intangible return on investment you
know clearly there's a lot around um
um
the
learnings
those the job outcomes but there's an
awful lot of kind of intangible benefits
that people maybe don't consider on
their journey in maybe could you share a
couple of those
sure i think one of the biggest ones is
obviously living in london is a
wonderful experience you're literally at
the center of the world on a flat map so
it just opens up so many doors and that
experience of living in a new place a
new culture and everyone is so from such
diverse backgrounds having studied in
the us for undergrad and kind of growing
up here there's a lot of good schools
here as well but nothing i think even
having gone to nyu it's a great school
has its benefits but doesn't give that
real global mindset and framework where
in a classroom you're talking with your
professors and students and it's a great
experience but in lbs it's students
giving opinions from countries that
they're from running businesses how they
run and giving that opinion and feedback
those soft skills that you inherently
get and adapt to is amazing and that new
perspective and opening your mind up to
new ideas is so genuine and i think
that's something aside from living in
london in the lbs community is so real
um and so not being sound cliched about
it but it really is real when someone
next to you is from turkey telling you
how business is run there and someone on
the other side is from italy telling you
how they do things and it's just amazing
so the perspectives are amazing
super and and
friendships for life as well really
critically as well i'm peter
shares my insights from your point of
view
i could go on and on on this question uh
but
like sangeeta said the diversity is one
of lbs's biggest strengths i can
confidently say that i have a home in
mexico nigeria china japan i have
friends who would
happily host me there and i could say
the same thing i'd happily host my lbs
classmates and the friends that i've
made here in india aside apart from that
i traveled so much because london is
in and travel to europe is so easy you
could literally get your schengen visa
if you're you know if you're from a
country that needs visa and you could
fly to any country in two hours and it
costs basically nothing like i mean 60
pounds and you could do a round trip to
germany i mean really like that's
amazing so i did some seven eight trips
in uh the one year at lbs and um
like anita said that because the
diversity culture because of the diverse
class i remember i was applying for an
internship which was in the oil and gas
sector and i had no idea about what the
oil and gas industry is i just reached
out to a classmate of mine who's from
venezuela and worked in the oil and gas
industry for 78 years and asked him to
sit down with me for one hour and you
know take me through the 101 of the oil
and gas industry and he happily did that
uh more recently with all the things
that are happening in china
and the uncertainty is there i'm
literally trying to figure out what
would happen for my companies which are
exposure to china and i'm going to reach
out to a friend of mine
i'll be a classmate of mine who's from
china and ask her how people over there
think about things uh so real uh uh live
i mean day-to-day implications
fantastic james over to you
yeah sure um
like first of all i agree with
everything um my colleagues have said
but um
the thing that got me was just like the
the friends i made here have been um you
know they're still some of my best
friends in the world
um i remember there was um one of my
mates the south african guy um
he he was getting uh he was getting
married on the day of his wedding i
couldn't make it but um he called me up
in the morning he's like mate i'm
writing my speech
like the morning of night you need you
need to get your life in order a bit
more than that but he's like yeah yeah
just give me some jokes so i always sat
there
i think i said that um the fact he was
getting married today was an
illustration of the risks of skipping
leg day at the gym because just
sometimes your knee gets weak around
your girlfriend and all of a sudden
you're engaged and that's of happens um
but there's also been a lot of really
useful um conversations with people who
work in companies and other other
investment firms
um and you can hear the the real
unabridged version of what's going on um
whether you're looking to go along one
of their ideas or short one of their
ideas or whether you're just looking for
insight into how they think about things
you'll get
a really um a really honest
uh candid uh answer from them
great james can you i think we were
talking about this i think a few weeks
ago
maybe could you reflect a bit on
confidence because i always think that's
one of the
hidden intangible benefits that comes
from study yeah and it's kind of quite
hard to give a sense of that
yeah so um i think i spent probably my
the first half of my 20s trying to know
absolutely everything about finance
because that would then give me the
confidence to
you know answer it all and that's that's
a fool's errand because there's just too
much to know um but what i came away
with from lbs was like a certain
confidence not that i would know
everything but probably know roughly the
right answer and if i didn't i'd
probably know where to find it or could
reason it out from first principles
um to give you an example of that i've
i've never been a merchant banker i've
never worked in m a um and i was asked
one of the hedge funds i worked for
after i've been at lbs to model out
merger accounting and how balance sheets
and pianos look afterwards and i kind of
just did it and it was like bang on the
first time how the hell did he do that
i'm not even sure it's right mate
you know there's a debit here the credit
goes somewhere else and i went from
there and it was um
it was that kind of confidence that
comes out it's not about that i'll know
every answer but it's about
i'll know a lot of answers and the ones
i don't well look i can give you a very
good guess or at least find out where
the answer lies um so yeah i hope that
answers your question peter i totally
totally and i think
sangita your thoughts on this and
perhaps broadening it out to
specifically as a woman working in the
finance sector where um
not that you're by any means less
skilled but your voice can be
much harder to have amplified
and
how
the myth has impacted you in that
specific space
absolutely and especially in a virtual
world as well peter i think when we were
we were in the class that got pushed
into the virtual world halfway or three
quarters of the way through the program
and then joining work in a virtual world
fully is uh was an extraordinary
experience but that this program um as
james mentioned again as well sorry to
sound redundant but with so many
different um
courses that teach you and give you the
technical skills with like real life
applications for the actual companies
balance sheets and income statements so
it's not some made up idea
it's very tangible and knowing that
you're supported by students by your
professors who give you the skills
literally on spreadsheets that you
follow through in one of our classes as
an example we did a starbucks um
analysis for one of the securities
analysis classes and knowing that you
were able to build that out and that you
know how to do it and you always have an
example to fall back on gives that
technical skill confidence and then the
flip side of it with the soft skills
again because you're surrounded by
people with such different backgrounds
really diverse personalities ways of
conveying the information
you sort of adapt into that and kind of
learn how to how to handle different
people that you work with how to
accommodate them as well and then it
kind of helps you know your
conversations and be able to voice
yourself because you know who you're
working with because you've been exposed
to such a diverse array of like
personalities that i don't i don't think
you can get anywhere else to be honest
not even in any workspace i know
companies work on global levels but
having that interaction and that
confidence knowing that you're learning
so much technically and soft skill wise
and being able to apply that is just
incredible especially in a virtual world
so you sort of know your people better
know your skills better
fantastic i'm going to move on to
slightly different area and
asking you all about your engagement
with the school since you graduated so
your engagement with other alumni with
the school in general uh peter and i saw
earlier so i know our peter's in for the
myth barbecue today james i'm sensing
you're in the school just from the
background
so both of both of you are clearly still
engaged in the school and i am hoping to
see you in the school's local pub after
this session
but um uh peter how much have you been
able to be involved um with the school
with your classmates and with
prospective students since you completed
a lot actually uh my london life is
pretty synonymous to my lbs life uh
because i first moved to london for lbs
uh all my friends in london are from lbs
uh about 30 35 of my class is still here
and while we may not see each other as
much as we'd like to as much as we saw
each other uh when we were studying here
we do get together every now and then
for somebody's birthday or somebody's
farewell and it's always so great to
meet them
uh funny that you mentioned it but we
will i met james earlier today we were
literally at the miff bbq and it felt so
great to be back on campus and i envy
everybody who's starting out right now i
wish i could relive uh that year and a
half at lbs again uh but apart from that
we have men i mean i have many people
reach out to me on linkedin who want to
talk uh about lbs or talk about a
recruitment process uh in the asset
management industry and because i had
students or alumni who very happily
spoke to me when i was
uh when i wanted advice i feel like it's
my turn to give back and i'm very happy
to talk to prospective students or
current students who are trying to
recruit uh yeah and even alumni uh
it's a great network uh yeah i mean
in fact i got my job uh because i
reached out to somebody who was an
alumni i mean somewhat and it plays a
role
fantastic james
we can't get rid of you
no you've tried pj you've tried that but
i think you're the only longest-serving
uh lbs smith person there i might be
number two
uh no i i can only um
okay what peter said there um look i'm
what five six six gobbler coming up to
seven oh god um seven years out and i
still feel the same way that it's like
um people who reach out to me who want
to connect if if i can help you and i
have the time to help you i will go out
of my way to do everything i can um
solely because people did the same thing
for me when i was here
um in terms of staying engaged um
yeah
i've come back for a lot of events um
like recruiting events um um
the old hedge fund i worked for we hired
i think over the years about seven lbs
people was either interns or um you know
after their course finished
um and also just doing stuff like stock
pitching competitions um there are often
presentations put on by the investment
management club that i go to i've got
some heroic investor in town who
would love to hear from you've got a
two-hour lecture from in the afternoon
um so yeah the journey at lbs very much
doesn't finish when you graduate um
there's a there's a lot um you can
you can come back for and um as as in
your time while you're at the school
and the more you give back um the more
you get out
absolutely
sangeeta similar views
yes my background is not lbs this is
definitely my home
i'm not there but hopefully soon enough
um but as everyone mentioned as well uh
i think my focus going in again with my
three sheets of paper which was very
real with the career paths having the
alumni hub i think was what it was
called when we were there um was so
useful because i
literally just like sent random emails
to alumni who were in industries that i
was interested in or looking for not
even for like get me a job please kind
of a question but more of like what do
you actually do in your day-to-day what
is it actually like in your company and
that was the best honest feedback i've
ever gotten versus like going to
approaching little boots at the career
sessions are great but not the same not
the same level of understanding so the
alumni network is so strong and so
global again which is amazing
um and then in terms of our own class as
well
we
like we mentioned before uh in march
when things started getting a little bit
shaky i think a lot of our class got
dispersed earlier than expected around
the world but we had like the we still
have our whatsapp group going with all
these students which i'm sure everyone
else does as well but uh we had students
hosting like how to make tiramisu
classes and things like that for our
class so it's amazing that it runs very
deep and um the the connections are
always there around the world
great um i'm going to go on to pick some
of the questions from the q a so
people keep sending those in
and
first one from alonso is what insights
did you gain from the different clubs
and
extracurricular activities
while at lbs and how do you think that
might have helped in your job search so
i'll throw that open to the three of you
who wants to run with that
i'll kick it off if you're watching
yes that's right so look um i was a
member of the um first thing i'll say is
pick like one or two and at most three
clubs you want to be part of because so
there are so many things to do here you
will actually run out of time to
study network and uh and apply for jobs
if you do too many um
the two i was part of were the rugby
club and the investment management club
um the rugby club was mostly social but
that's probably the mistake going and
just thinking it's just social a lot of
people got some very good jobs out of
just the networking and the former rugby
club people who are always back on
campus
um the second one was the investment
management club and that was fantastic
just because of the stock pitching comps
they ran um i'd worked for hedge fund
for a couple of years when i arrived at
lbs and i thought i was pretty good
stock pitching turns out that was the
lie i told myself and
that uh by the third or fourth iteration
i was actually getting to a stage where
well it wasn't a total train wreck but
it wasn't exactly glorious but i was um
you know light years ahead of where i
was when i joined um
and the final one i did was it's not
really a club but it's um the ski track
um definitely go on that one that's that
should almost be compulsory
and gita what are your good memories of
club activities and how they
contributed
to your learning to your career
development etc or just to you the
general enjoyment of life
yes so definitely i was part of i was a
career rep for our team and that was
really important to me because i think
by the i sound like a parrot but
my focus is super on my career
transitioning that so i went in with
that goal um so i tried to take on roles
that would help with that um kind of
getting to know the coaches better
understanding also to help out our own
class as well kind of you hear the
things your class needs and you're able
to kind of voice that support them
through it and help out as much as you
can as well um so that was really
rewarding because it sort of helps you
again understand different perspectives
what people are looking for and give you
a couple of perks as well along the way
and then i did social impact club i was
all part of the board there that was
because i don't know anything about um
impact investing and it's becoming quite
a bit of a trend as well to keep an eye
out on for certain clients at least so
um that was very very helpful because it
was so different from what i wanted to
do i learned so much we met with so many
small companies in london like different
coffee companies all the way to
humanitarian based companies um doing
some really cool impact investing so
that was so rewarding and i don't think
i'd get that opportunity elsewhere so
that was really nice
great uh and our peter what are your
recollections
so the way i thought about it was i
joined one social club one professional
club and one regional club i was a part
of the investment management club just
as a member not as a part of the exco
but there was so much to learn so i
transitioned my career from financial
advisor
and i wanted to get into investment
management and the imc was so useful
because we had like a speaker coming in
every two weeks and even though you'd
you'd feel like after a few times what
you hear tends to get repetitive
please go for all these events because
what happens is when you hear the same
thing over and over again about the
trends in the industry about what they
think about the markets you before you
realize that it becomes a part of your
lingo so even though you have no
uh prior experience in a certain
industry you can speak in that language
and that goes a long way
for my social club i was part of the
tedx lbs club and i was a part of the
speakers committee so
tedx always fascinated me i used to
listen to many ted talks before coming
to lbs and when i saw that lbs has its
own tedx uh
club i had to join it and it was so cool
being a part of the speakers committee
deciding what the theme would be what
kind of speakers we'd want on board uh i
had fun with that and i was a part of
the india club and we organized the
diwali party so diwali is an indian
festival and it's huge at lbs every
class puts up this dance performance and
there's a competition and people take it
very seriously so it's like uh song and
dance uh for four or five hours and
it was amazing i choreographed like ten
of my classmates and eight of them were
non-indians who did not understand what
the lyrics were but all of us were
dancing to hindi songs and it was it was
fun
diwali
oh am i
just excited
and the diwali party is epic um
while at lbs do students get the
opportunity to participate in case
competitions
maybe um one of you could say a bit more
about case competitions and generally
competitions in general
and perhaps stop pitch a bit more about
stock pitch
so i had never prepared a stock pitch
before i came to lbs but uh that's the
beauty of lbs right there are internal
stock picking competitions that are
about two a year and i think i think and
there are many external competitions as
well uh there's an orbis stock picking
workshop i think cornell runs uh women
in investing uh
stock pitch competition
and
i made my first stock pitch for one of
these competitions
and i learned i used whatever i learned
about making a stock pitch in that
competition to participate in the next
one and that helped me get selected for
the always stock picking workshop uh so
stock pitch may sound
extremely complicated but it's basic it
basically comes down to what does the
company do how does the industry work
what is your investment thesis what does
the market think about it and why you
think that's not true i mean what do you
think about the stock that may differ
from what the market thinks and how you
value the company and what your target
price is and whether you think it's a
buy or a sell so that's the json james
you can correct me if i'm if i'm missing
out on something uh
it sounds complicated but i enjoyed it
and i did a lot of primary research
while working on my stock pitch
for one of the companies which was a
used car vehicle market space i went and
spoke to all the used car dealers uh in
and around malibun so a lot of fun
james do you want to expand on that a
bit
yeah sure um
i guess when i came to um to lbs my my
idea of what the perfect stock pitch was
was sort of a um an oral thesis which
went on for about six hours that proved
how much i knew about the company it
probably goes back to your um
your confidence point earlier peter but
um
yeah i um
i think by the time i've done a few
stock pitching comps and uh and the case
competitions as well i did one for
impact investing early on like very
quickly learned you can't sort of just
um
blather on about things you actually
need to get to the point
um and i came out um probably with an
even more um even more sparse uh stock
pitch than uh peter said before but
if um if you can't do it in 30 seconds
you probably don't know it um if you
can't take five minutes of questions you
probably don't know
so
i got to a stage where um when i was
pitching them and then eventually when i
was head of research i said to analysts
right i want to know in the first 30
seconds is this a revenue a margin or an
investment story i want to know why
you're right in the markets wrong and i
want to know what your price target is
and then i want you to shut up
and then we'll find out if you actually
know what you're talking about but um
it's kind of that was a process that
started at lbs because
you have people that come to these stock
pitching comps who are pms for very
serious hedge funds um and you get them
but this is at the end of a very long
day in markets um i graduated post uh
just after the brexit vote so it was a
particularly long day of markets and
they were
going in there and you realize they
don't have time they want to know
exactly what you think why you think it
and then they'll ask you questions if
they haven't quite understood
yeah that's that's good
sangeeta anything to add on that around
competitions case studies stock pitches
etc
personally i didn't participate in the
stock pitches a lot of our classmates
did but um
my career interest was quite a little
bit different than that so i stayed on
track with uh what i needed to do there
but there's amazing opportunities i
think but then james covered everything
about it and
there's a lot of other different
competitions hosted by these companies
as well so if you always once they're
especially when they're recruiting at
lbs we noticed a lot of their career
websites but also have a lot of
information on upcoming competitions so
if you're interested it's it's such a
good way to get into it
fantastic um
got a question in the q a about um
things that you learnt um outside kind
of if you like the mainstream finance
curriculum um did you guys do anything
around strategy
um because there is the strategy for
myth option and maybe talk a bit about
things like the
personal assessment and development the
the um soft skill
elements of the program and
if they work for you if they did
actually add value i mean i think i
think it's an important question because
when we say this is very much a finance
focused program
we shouldn't be giving the
impression it's only finance because
it's important that people acquire some
of those more sort of generic business
school experience because that's so
important to your life development and
your career development so uh peter can
i call on you first on that one
so i did the negotiations class and it
was
probably in my
in my top three electives if i may say
so so we had case studies every class
and
you'd team up with a partner or you
you'd be a part of two different teams
and behave like your life depended on
that negotiation and you learned so much
by the end of it so i used those
uh the learnings from that class to
negotiate my rent the next year uh
so
uh i i thought that was a very useful
task
particularly if he got you a
recent rent reduction or whatever most
definitely paid for itself
my my smile should answer that question
yeah
exactly it does
senegita so the non-finance elements
what did you really perhaps benefit from
within that
sure so one of the biggest classes i the
one of the most unique classes away from
finance i took was the security strategy
i got confused again with the securities
class the strategies class that was like
a one week long elective in december i
think of 2019 was when i took that one a
very intense course for a week of
learning strategy and marketing but very
very helpful um
jokes aside i did learn about like boxed
wine from that class which i didn't know
like the market for but i mean it's an
example of a good conversation topic
somewhere along the line um but
genuinely we've learned a lot about how
to how certain companies do work how
certain industries work and it was so
different from the securities class as
an example that was so much more
technical and this just took it to a
different level and i thought a week was
very adequate to learn sort of the
content it was a fast-paced course but i
think it's enough time to like pick up
on the basic skills of it and have
really good debates so the class
structure was just so different um fully
like open classroom settings and
everyone was just kind of giving out
their ideas and thoughts so brought a
different kind of um
like a setting itself to a class and
then i did a couple of economics courses
as well because i knew in the future
those are harder to get um rather than
just sitting and studying for like a cfa
where you can try to pick up on more
technical skills so that was also really
helpful i think we had a lot of mbas in
that class as well so that allowed for
like interaction between classes and now
you're also getting people from more
different backgrounds from consulting
backgrounds giving their opinions you're
learning a lot in the classroom setting
itself from electives
great um i'm
conscious that we're starting to run out
of time um
um
did any of you move here with a partner
or
even perhaps partner with kids i
honestly can't remember um but
either way if one of you at least one of
you could talk about
how partners and families are involved
and how welcome
they should expect to be
i can i can probably take this one peter
i didn't move here with their partner or
kids but um some of my very good friends
who still live here so jp and atkins i'm
thinking of yeah um
yeah they're um they moved here with i
think atkins had two kids and jp now has
one um and um
i think maggie who's uh jp's wife um now
and um
yeah i think i know her as well as i
know jp
it's just because
she's it's like every second event
they're at so you're very much welcome
um
and as as for atkins um
yeah i've met both these kids and told
them horrible stories about their father
and um
but you know
you're all very welcome here um and i
know a lot of people from the mba their
kids and their partners and um and all
that kind of stuff so
don't don't think you're going to be
sort of
locking them away at home and never
letting them house that's a there's a
big community and a strong community and
i think there's even like partners
specific clubs
um at lbs
there isn't a partners club on um
what was it wednesday this week i did
guided tours around the campus for the
partners in the partners club and which
was lovely and lbs really does
involve
[Music]
people also partners and students
automatically get access to the library
they get access to
um a lot of the club activities they get
access to the gym and the swimming pool
as well so it's very much we see it as
being you know the whole family is
joining lbs
and it's important that because um
if you know
people with partners rely on their
partners a lot
during their time so for our from our
perspective
what we're getting in return is a really
welcoming environment for students
partners as well
um next question really good one just
posted is
what did you find
maybe your biggest challenge
um undertaking the program and how did
you overcome it successfully hoping that
you did under
overcome it successfully and sangeetha
should we go to you first for that one
sure i think um
one of the biggest there were a few but
one was definitely moving um to a new
country and a new city so adapting to
that i think again you're in such a
welcoming community where you take a
step back it's not undergrad it's not
that kind of an experience anymore it's
it is quite different in the sense that
it is a graduate school experience but
you are surrounded by people who are all
going through very similar circumstances
so i think having that community
genuinely helps because in a school
that's as big as nyu for example it's
massive it's global but everyone's doing
their own thing and like kind of like
very focused on like i need to go from a
to b and i'm getting there so move out
of my way
versus that lbs is like okay we all need
to go from a to b let's all you know
whether it was like staying in the
library until like 2 a.m working on
certain assignments which we should have
all done done earlier but we didn't we
still all suffered and worked together
through it brought us closer with our
teams um and i think things like group
projects were a challenge again because
you kind of face out of that at work i
feel where you work in partnerships and
groups but it's a different sort of
project and you're being paid a
different way for it so versus here it's
like you're getting back into working in
groups and
different personalities different
schedules different timings some people
are part-time some were full some were
mba so
time management was a big challenge
again because now you're accommodating a
lot of other people and those kinds of
things were more challenging for me
personally um rather than like technical
skills in a class where you can learn
that
great
absolutely if you aren't a good time
manager at the start of the program you
soon will be or you'll drown it's it is
very much and i think one thing when we
were talking about clubs etc just the
sheer volume of things that are
available at any point can become quite
daunting and i think you all
clearly had quite a good um
a good plan about
focusing on what was most important and
not getting too led astray by just the
sheer exciting volume of everything
that's there so peter looking back what
was what was your biggest challenge do
you think
yeah like you said there are so many
things happening on campus in terms of
academics in terms of company
presentations uh speaker series and
clubs social events someone's throwing a
house party there's a sundowner people
want to go to mestizo after it
so just the day-to-day decision-making
process about should i go for the
investment management lab speaker series
or should i attend a company event by
some other club was extreme
it sounds like a very small decision but
when you have to make a decision every
day it could become overwhelming and i
remember this phase where uh for
investment banking recruitment you need
to do many coffee chats and a huge chunk
of my class were doing that and
for three four days i remember feeling
extremely overwhelmed because i was not
doing any coffee chats and uh i was like
uh am i not motivated enough you know is
something wrong with me why am i not
doing coffee chats and then you need to
take a step back and realize that i
don't need to do coffee chats i need to
focus on preparing a stock pit and then
go and meet investment professionals
with that stock pitch so
the way i dealt with it and this is one
piece of advice that i give everybody
who's who comes to me is identify your
objectives
when you come to lbs decide what you
want to do do you want to travel do you
want to focus on jobs do you want to ace
every elective and get an a grade and
try and stick to
doing the top two three things and then
whatever else you do is bonus i mean
that's one way that will help you remain
same
absolutely yes
james
looking back those many long years
absolutely absolutely might i say you
haven't aged today um but yeah it's uh
the wonders of advances in cosmetic
surgery i think jake i thought it was
the medicinal qualities of the windsor
library but you know it could well be
that it could be that yes
the windsor library for those of you who
are wondering is the winds of puppets on
campus it's great um i think i should
probably be paying rent there given the
amount of time
yeah but but i think just i
i have my own challenge but um i think
what peter mentioned there is like
having focus on your goals and sticking
to them um that is that is absolutely
critical um because if you don't you
will drown or die of a caffeine overdose
um it's it's very important to know what
you want out of it and how you're going
to get those things it's fine if that
goal changes but have one goal at the
time
um my one's a bit off pissed um the
biggest challenge i had and this is for
the younger people who are listening in
i was i think third or fourth youngest
in the class um average age is like 29
30 and i came in thinking like there's
no way i'll be able to contribute
anything these people are so much
smarter and better than me and um
i'm happy to say now that i couldn't
have been more wrong
about that um and even if i did still
think that there was no way to hide
because professors cold call you all the
time
um and then your classmates want to chat
about your experience afterwards um and
so i just started telling them what i
actually did and challenges i faced and
it was actually there were a lot of
common threads and
not only did i learn a lot but people
have said to me and still say to me like
i remember this time you said you know x
wine's open this class and it's really
clarified something for me
um so yeah that was that was probably
the biggest challenge is just getting
over myself
fantastic
thank you all very much um i hope i'm
sure that everybody who's taken part in
this
has really benefited from your insights
and
i'm always delighted to see you all
and james and i peter i might be in the
winter library shortly
excellent
chat after the event
but other than that um thank you very
much for taking part and i
think i'm handing over to one of my
colleagues to wrap up
if not i will attempt to just to give a
brief wrap up
um thank you everybody who's taken part
today
thank you especially to
my colleagues and to our current
students and our alumni for adding all
the additional color to it
and we will be following up shortly with
a transcript of this event
and on your registration invite you'll
see a link to some other resources
um in terms of previously recorded
content that you might want to call on
that's got some great things like um
our
current students interviewing alumni we
have a series of those events we have
things about programme content we have
things about submitting a strong
application
and in the q a along the way a quite a
lot of you asked
very specific questions about your own
profile
or quite specific questions about the
admissions requirements which we just
didn't have time to answer but make a
note of this and it will be in the
follow-up email
any follow-up questions um
about
the program about the application
process
the email is myth
london.edu
so it couldn't be simpler
myth at london.edu
and if you've got questions about
your fit for the program
or your um
your fit for the program or the
possibility of a gmat waiver send your
cv and your transcripts
to the same address so that's myth
london.edu
so
as i say thank you all very much for
taking part
we hope you found it productive
we hope to speak to many of you later
and indeed
welcome you to our beautiful london
campus
so with that
good night and enjoy the rest of your
weekend

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