Soft Skills In Finance

[DeltaVega]

How important do you think soft skills are in finance careers? From your experience do a lot of careers in the finance industry - quantitative finance industry in specific - require people skills.

I consider myself a people person, I genuinely love talking with people... I would hate to have a career where I am staring at a computer for 80 hours a week - i enjoy being secluded from time to time, but cannot take not speaking to other humans!!

I understand that in management there is definitely a lot of social interaction, but as far as entry level jobs go, what do you know from your experience? Are those skills valued, or is your technical performance the main valuable asset you bring to a company?

 

[Daniel Duffy]

How do you define 'soft skills'?

 

[DeltaVega]

soft skills = leadership + communication skills

 

[pplstuff]

Soft skills are important at every point of your career. You will always have more opportunities put in front of you if you're likeable, personable, friendly, you care about those you work with, etc. The fact is, no one wants to work with a hermit or an ass. Soft skills are important in landing a job too (even at entry-level). Remember, you're future employer is looking for someone who will 'fit in' and work well with the rest of the team. And, as you said, they're more important at the managerial levels because, in theory, your job will be a less technical role and more of a leadership role.

 

[Ken Abbott]

Quant programs are churning out graduates by the hundred. Math skills are easy to find. Communication skills and other soft skills are much more rare.

 

[bigbadwolf]

soft skills = leadership + communication skills

This is analogous to answering "What is x?" with "x = y + z," where neither y nor z have been defined. What's the nature of these "leadership" and "communication" skills? It's a great mystery to me.