Think of this assignment as chapter two and three of your research paper. Only submit the Literature review and Proposal (Do not include your Introduction and methodology - especially the references for those sections).

Discussion on career option: Finance Consultant

Name Chengchen Zhang

Student Number 215202593

1. The key skills and knowledge for finance consultant

Finance consultant is similar with analysts and psychological consultant who make use of their professional knowledges to provide finance planning and investment consultation service. Consequently, finance consultant needs good personal soft skills, and specific knowledge and skills.

1.1 Personal soft skills

· Communication skill is the basic personal soft skill, such as interpersonal and communication skills, requiring finance consultant to have good communication ability to fully understand customer’s information, requirements, finance goals and some basic information (Mathieson 2015). It is also essential for customer relationship management.

· Keen insight is one of important soft skills by which it is helpful to seize every moment as a learning opportunity consequently knowledges can be continually updated, and personal analytical thinking ability can also be improved, accordingly finance consultant develop keen insight to provide valuable information for customers.

· Enthusiasm is essential because attitude determines everything. If one finance consultant has no enthusiasm, it is difficult to become one qualified finance consultant.

· Work experience, especially internship for the graduated students, is greatly indispensable because we can accumulate experiences to improve our problem solving and analytical skills.

· Teamwork skills are strongly important. Usually, collaboration does improve all members’ cohesion to ensure the organization can effectively operate, and is contributed to cultivating the great sense of responsibility.

It is crucial to own good specific knowledges related to finance, investment, economic and law, as well as specific skills such as critical reasoning and analytical skills, personal reaction capability and self-management skills.

· Investment and financing skills such as learning ability are contributed to mastering the knowledges related to the field of finance, being familiar with finance services like stocks, funds, bonds, foreign exchange and others in order to better improve market development capability. As well, one good finance consultant should also develop problem solving and rational analytical skills, self-management ability and responsiveness. More importantly, rational analytical skills are vitally important for one finance consultant to help analyse collected materials and data to make rational finance plan and provide rational finance products so as to meet customers’ needs and goal (Gardner, Mills & Cooperman, 2000).

2. Evaluation of my skills and capabilities

To obtain my dream position of finance consultant, it should evaluate my current capabilities, discipline knowledge and areas where I am developing skills and knowledges.

Diagram 1 Assessment results on my career assessment

The specific evaluations are shown as follows.

· d) (J-P) scale suggests that I perceive and inclined to be spontaneous and flexible, and would like to gather information, explore and discover new things in a perceiving attitude. I like to go with the flow and starting things to finishing them. However, sometimes, I am inclined to be procrastination although maybe I can manage to finish the thing at the last-minute.

2.2 My experiences related to improving my abilities

a) As the member of student unions, I actively participate in volunteer activities and successfully hold three large-scale workshops and activities, especially the discussion forum about the influence of finance crisis and the sustainable development of banking industry. During the process, whether forum planning or organization, I have a great progress in organizational capability, communication skills, teamwork and thinking analysis ability.

c) The summer internship employed by an investment company to distribute leaflets makes me produce strong interesting and enthusiasm in finance and investment consultant. After that, I borrow plenty of books from the library and learn more knowledge about finance and investment.

2.3 My academic performance

3.1 Skills and knowledges developed to meet industry standards.

Based on comparing my personal skills and knowledges with industry standards, these aspects still need to develop in the future.

· Self-time management and control should be improved. Self-evaluations show that my time-control does not well, so I should leave enough time to prepare properly to better maintain customer relationship so as to raise service efficiency.

· It is important to listen and accept others’ views. A good finance consult, firstly, should do a good listener to fully understand customers’ needs and requirements. As Gardner, Mills & Cooperman (2000) identified, a man who knows to listen is the most persuasive. Although one finance consult should have unique views, it is necessary to absorb others’ opinions.

· I need to improve my personal communicational ability to effectively manage customer relationship. Usually, I like to work with alone and my social network is narrow. I should find too much interaction with others.

· Rational and analytical skills are crucial for one finance consult because one of important jobs is to synthetically analyse customers’ basic situation in order to provide customers with finance advice and give specific instructions based on customer’s demands.

3.2 Strategies for developing skills and knowledge

To develop my skills and knowledge, I will implement these strategies in the future.

· I independently conduct academic studies, studying one book each month, reading two academic journals each month and attending twice academic lectures each semester, in order to increase my personal professional knowledges.

· I plan to take part in an internship in the investment & finance company for about two months to learn how to seek business opportunity and provide clients with professional, sustained, long-term finance and follow-up tracking service.

· I want to take part in twice volunteering activities related to organizing leadership role to improve my sociability and personal communicational skills.

3.3 Timeline for the development of my skills and knowledge

4. Conclusion

Based on comparing my personal skills and knowledges with the criterion of job industry, I still have some aspects for improvement like professional knowledges, self-time management and control and personal communicational ability. So, I provide strategies and design a timeline for developing skills and knowledges.

5. Appendices

6. References

Farrell, LM 2003, ‘Principal-agency risk in project finance’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 547-561.

Mathieson 2015, ‘Finance consultant in Sydney warns many home buyers in danger of losing grants’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 54-61.