Client Background
Robert is a pragmatic and serious young man approximately 30 years old with 7 years of experience in corporate finance. He is completing the last semester of his MBA. His background includes:
- B.A. in Business from University of Wisconsin
- Certified Public Accountant
- Chartered Financial Analyst, Level 1 Candidate
Presenting Problem/Need
Robert was concerned about how to communicate his disappointing finance summer internship in his resume and forthcoming interviews. He had hoped the internship would serve as a bridge to a new role within finance for an investment management company. The meeting led to a discussion about how he could overcome his lack of specific related experience and market his corporate finance background towards his goal – a position in the “Buy Side” of Asset Management.
Degree of Self-Awareness gained from Behavioral/Verbal Data
It became clear that Robert had many pieces of information about himself but was missing a detailed picture of his strengths, weaknesses, interests and values to make a compelling story to the counselor, let alone a potential employer.
Underlying Issues, Development Factors and Causes to Explore
Robert admitted that his naturally introverted nature and dislike for “promoting” himself also contributed to his difficulties in making a transition.
Robert's Career Profile: Career Driver Skills with Examples
Skills from Skill Summary
Creative
Skills: Visualize, Conceptualize, Demonstrate Foresight, Brainstorm, Design and Create Images. Designed and developed a highly effective one page financial dashboard used for making business decisions. Identified methods for improving company and senior management performance metrics for Board of Directors. Playing golf – finding creative ways to get ball out of the trees.
Analytical
Skills: Solve Problems, Analyze, Evaluate, Estimate, Compute, Research. Figuring out pieces of a puzzle. Built models for discounted cash flow analysis on several projects.
Relationship
Skills: Collaborate, Counsel, Demonstrate Social/Cultural Sensitivity. Led five-member team that designed and documented processes for an electronic payment system.
Values (from Career Leader assessment
- Intellectual Challenge
- Affiliation
- Lifestyle
- Recognition
- Financial Gain
Interest Themes (from Career Leader assessment)
- Quantitative
- Theory Development and Conceptualization
- Creative Production
Myers-Briggs Type
I N T P
Strategies/Sessions
Robert agreed to review his Career Leader assessment results and complete Advance Pack to obtain a clearer picture of his unique skills and strengths, and combine this information with his Myers-Briggs type. Additional personal information in conjunction with the assessment results would be used to validate or revise his career goal and help prepare a convincing story to facilitate his transition.
Career Counseling Outcome
The assessment process confirmed Robert’s core analytical skills and strengths in performing financial evaluation in a wide variety of projects and processes. One major new piece that became apparent was Robert’s underutilized skills and preference for using skills in the Creativity area. Given that he had worked in fairly traditional corporate finance roles where his job was to deliver specific financial information to solve problems or make decisions, there was minimal opportunity to apply his creative abilities to come up with new and different methods for accomplishing his manager’s goals. When reflecting upon enjoyable aspects in his previous position, he mentioned how he enjoyed the initial design process where he tested different theories in developing successful models.
Goal Accomplishment
In this brief counseling process, Robert gained a new perspective about his “creative problem-solving” strengths, which led him to re-evaluate and gain new insight about the type of options that could be a good fit. He decided to broaden his search beyond Asset Management. He now wanted to take a second look at corporate finance but in a Valuation Group and also consider Private Equity.
Counselor - Key Learnings
To effectively market himself in a highly competitive job market it was critical for Robert to start from a solid base of personal understanding to increase his confidence level and enhance his ability to target the right initial position for his post-MBA career track.