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I want to work in Finance AND IT? |
I don't know what my major in college should be... I want to have a job in a large city someday working with IT/computers/technology AND finance/business stuff... Is that possible? If so, what major should I look into? I will most likely get my MBA.. but for bachelor's, I have thought about Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Economics, and Finance.. what do you recommend? Are there any other majors that I should consider? I don't think that I want to double major either, but I will do a minor. What major will give me the most opportunities for a job relating business and IT? The best chance would be to major in computer science and minor in business or MATH. There is a job out there called "quant programmer" that pays VERY well. You can learn the business at work, but it wouldn't hurt to take some finance classes (not economics) I did it too!!!! I did it -- although it did take some extra education. I completed a B.A. in Business Economics with a Computer Science minor, then after a few years of working as a computer specialist in a big national accounting firm, I went back to school at night and did an MBA in Information Resource Management from a top-ranked graduate school of business. With this combination, through most of my early career, my skills were in demand for both technical work on financial systems and for financial work for technology organizations... I could pretty much go either way as I chose. I ended up running the business/finance division of the IT Group of a Fortune 100 corporation. So then I got bored and went to law school. Go figure. ;-) Quant finance people create computer models for investment banks using C++, etc. Probably an undergrad degree in computer science or mathematics (or both) with some business or finance classes would be helpful, then either an MS in Quant Finance or an MBA in Finance after that. I'm working in the IT consulting industry working with financial institutions, and can say that the people in this field come from all sorts of educational backgrounds (my degrees are in Engineering and Philosophy). That being said, a lot depends on the type of work you want to do (more technical consulting or more business consulting). For new grads coming into IT, the work is usually split between Business Analysts (BAs) and Technical or Programming Analysts (PAs). The BAs tend to work on identifying business requirements, writing high level system designs, system testing and staff training. PAs actually write the program code. If you want to be a PA, you really need a technical background (or a company willing to train you), so I would go with Computer Science (with an MIS minor if you're feeling ambitious). If you'd rather be in the BA role, you can study almost anything! In my opinion, the best bet is to have industry knowledge, so if you want to work in the banking industry, study finance and get an MIS minor (or even just take a few courses to introduce you to IT processes). If you're not certain you'll want to work in finance, go with the MIS degree. My one word of caution is that the market got somewhat flooded with MIS grads a few years back, so a deeper industry knowledge is in higher demand. If someone wants to be a BA in our Pharmaceuticals Consulting group, for instance, we're more likely to hire someone with a Life Sciences background than MIS. The absolute bottom line for BAs, though, is that most large IT firms are looking at the difficulty of your educational program and your success in it. They're looking for aptitude at least as much as (and maybe more than) a specific skill set. So my final answer is, "it depends." I would recommend identifying some people in the field and asking them what they do on a day to day basis. Decide if you want to be a PA or a BA and make your decision based on that. The career paths are a little different, and the work you do is very different. It's harder to go into technical work from a business background, than the other way around, but a Finance degree has more applications outside of the IT world, so if you have a more technical leaning and think that's what you might want to do, go Computer Science. If you still have a lot of questions, I'd go with Finance (it's where the big money is, anyway). Good Luck! Feel free to send me an email if you have more questions, I'd be happy to help out. Whatever you decide, make sure that the computer science/IT part is your minor and not your major. There are no jobs in the US for computer scientists these days. All those jobs went to india many years ago. |
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