IT Skill set for Careers in IT and Finance

There is a virtual certainty that in your next job you are going to be involved with Information Technology.   You will work with sophisticated IT systems that process customer data, transactions, and financial information. In addition, as consultants and analysts you will not only use IT to do your jobs, but also participate in the management, redesigning, and auditing of these systems. Do you feel ready for that? This course can help. It provides you with an hands-on introduction to commercial technologies and can help you gaining an edge in a competitive job market.

Skills to list on your CV

  • Business Intelligence skills: extracting and analyzing information from enterprise databases
    Tools: SQL, Azure Data Studio, SQL Server, Pivot Tables, dynamic queries, ADO.Net
  • Financial Engineering skills: designing and implementing financial strategies
    Tools: Visual Studio, Hedge Tournament, Advanced Excel (e.g., solver)
  • Process automation skills:
    Tools: Activity Diagrams, Macros, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Visual Studio Tools for Office

Student comments

  • "... I just wanted to thank you because your class has opened up a lot of job opportunities for me this year. Right now I'm interviewing with Morgan Stanley ..." -JA
  • "... One of the best courses I've taken at UVa... the Hedge Tournament in particular was an incredibly useful experience. Not only invaluable in interviews, the skills learned during the tournament closely match those of traders in the industry... -PB
  • "... my current job [at BlackRock] is pretty much exactly like what I was doing in your class ..." -JL
  • "... JP Morgan invited me to the next round of interviews also because the recruiters were impressed by my Hedge Tournament story..." -FO
  • "... The Hedge Tournament was an important factor in my admission to Oxford's grad school because it is something distinctive and special!" -FOL
  • "... It took us about 12 hours to manually compile the numbers last time, but this time with [the technology learned in class], we spent less than 2 hours on the same task. " -HO
  • "... it was a great experience ... I'll be starting work in a high-frequency proprietary arbitrage trading firm..." -NC
  • "... I have actually spent the last few years in consulting (working in SAS, MS Access)... Your class was def. useful, especially for working in a consulting environment." -PS
  • "... I put 'competent in SQL' on my resume and am very confident that landed me the job offer at [financial organization]..."
  • "... The company I work for now ... is pretty much the business version of our tournament project" -HO
  • "... It's been ten years since I was taking classes with you but it's served me well. I just started in Google's Finance department ... I was able to talk to my IT background and it played well during the interview." -BC
  • "... I'm on my 4th week into the job and I've already built a number of macros into various financial models, particularly for updating cases on LBO models. Thanks so much for all the great instruction!" -CM
  • "... I trade credit/macro at Citadel ... building the algo, both front end and back end really helped me understand the technological side of trading. These days, I implement some of my trading strategies professionally with very similar set up as what I did at the Hedge Fund Tournament." -TZ
  • "Ideal story for ... interview at one of the Big Three management consultancies as it displays teamwork in a challenging setting while being highly memorable and providing evidence for numerous skills!" -TB
  • "had a job offer from IBM as a Digital Analytics Consultant. I was thrilled! ... I can say without hesitation that your class has truly made the biggest impact on my current profession. I use SAS, SQL, and VBA on a regular basis" - BK
  • "throughout my short time at Blackstone, I have been able to apply a lot of the skills I learned in your class" - JM
  • "I am now on the U.S. Rates Research desk [at Citigroup], mainly looking at Fed policies and short-end rates. You can't believe how useful your excel VBA macro skills are to me in a Research seat these days!! :)" - BX

Contents

The Tournament

Some of the following links will be enabled later in the course.