Developing Personal Career Readiness for Financial Industry

This paper discusses the need for developing skills to develop personal career readiness for the financial industry. It analyzes personal capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, industry requirements and trends, and knowledge gap analysis. The paper concludes that developing technical and soft skills is crucial for being an effective financial advisor.

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Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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1. Introduction:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the need of developing skills to develop personal
career readiness. The test results from SHAPAES, 16 Personality tests and Personal
Performance style are some of the most useful tools to find out strengths and weakness of the
personality. These identify in what aspect, the persons need to operate and develop. This
paper analyses every facts of detail from the perspective of the financial advisor and how the
individual can develop himself to get placed on top five financial organization. This paper
will be discussing the personal capabilities pointed out in the dashboard and analyses them to
understand the exact position in career readiness so that the ability to connect the academic
theories with the real life practices can be developed. By detailing the personal strength and
weaknesses, this paper has pointed out how these can affect the job choice. It will also
discuss the industry trend of the finance organizations by pointing out what trend for
employability are being followed and how much changes will be expected in the next five
years. Through graph the knowledge gap has also been shown which will be analyzed so that
the strengths are properly utilized and weaknesses are overcome.
2. My Capabilities
2. 1. My professional dashboard

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16Personalities SHAPES profile
Replace all here with your
PPF table and data Development areas - Skills and
capabilities
• Effective communication and negotiation skills
• Analysis of factors affecting finance industry
• Developing team building and management skills
• Career related working experience
Academic Review
Intended Major: finance
Academic Strengths/Interests:
Innovative ideas to solve academic issues, ability to learn and
memorise necessary points, ability to connect the academic
theories with the real life practices
Experiences
• Work – part time working experience in nearby café
• Volunteer – helping an NGO providing assistance to homeless
• Sport – school sporting club
• Deakin Commerce Society
Capabilities
• Communicating importance of morality and ethics in business
• Diplomatic decision making
• Compassionate with work needs
Values

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2.2. My capabilities analysis:
2.2.1 Findings of my tests:
In the tests like 16 personalities, SHAPES and other personality and behavioral test, I have
found out to fall in the Mediator category. From the personality test I have come to know that
score 65% in introverted, 63% intuitive, 60% feeling, 51% prospecting and 63% turbulent
(see appendix 1). This makes me to play the role of a diplomat and my strategy is the
constant improvement. My skills and habits are weak as found in the SHAPES test which is
23 and 26 consecutively, attitudes are very weak that is 37, preferences are quite weak that is
23 and strategies and experiences are little better than the other segments (see appendix 2, 3
and 4).
2.2.2 My Strengths and Weaknesses:
As a mediator, described in the personal capabilities dashboard, I possess some very
important strengths as well as weaknesses. I fall in the INFP category that points out that I am
an idealist person with open mid and flexibility. I am a creative person but from the
strategies, attributes and habits I am not perfectly fit for the workplace. Among my strengths
it can be stated that I am dedicated and hardworking person and possess far reaching vision
that may help me through overcoming the challenges present through various situation. As an
idealist person, when I believe in something, I get the sense of purpose and dedicate all my
time effort and thoughts to the accomplishment of the task. I am passionate and energetic but
lacks the public speaking skills due to the shy feature of a mediator. Among the weaknesses,
the most important is the introvert nature in me. I lack the attitudinal and behavioral skills
that makes me difficult to understand by the others. Moreover, I take things personally
whether it is positive or negative, that manipulates me to put great deal of effort and time to

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align the principles with the criticism. I do not like to deal with data because I see the big
picture hence miss out some very important information.
2.2.3 Impact of these strengths and weakness on my job choice
My idealistic and moralistic behavior and courage to face changing situation can help
me to overcome the barriers in the workplace I will face. I possess ability to strategies and
incorporate my experience in analyzing the situation and make diplomatic decision. I have
the capabilities to provide support from the background but do not show off my skills in
public. However, as I take things personally, I may face issues in the workplaces as I cannot
tolerate criticism. In my job choice of being a financial advisor and guiding my clients for
developing financial plan may not be successfully done if I cannot overcome my negative
habits and attitudes. Being too idealistic, I cannot bridge the gap between moral decisions and
business decisions always. Hence the impractical features of mediator can prevent me from
being a successful financial in the finance industry. Hover as I am an energetic and true
larger, I can dedicate my time in learning technical skills which I lack as well as the
developing soft skills relating to habits, knowledge, attitude and experience.

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3. 3.0 My Industry Requirements and Trends
3 a. My industry dashboard
INDUSTRY NAME: Finance
Industry growth areas:
 Increased use of AI (Cavalcante et al.
2016)
 Increased government. oversight
regulatory
 Compliance (Hammami and Oueslati
2017)
 Growing demand due to rising income
across income brackets
 Growing penetration
 Policy support
Graduate Criteria (required, expected,
desirable):
 Bachelor degree in business chiefly
finance
 1-2 years of sales experience
 Career knowledge regarding financial
sector
 Proficient in working in computer
 Knowledge of language
 Working in team ambiance (Benešová
and Tupa 2017)
TECHNICAL SKILLS:
 Min Degree in Counting to ten (Raoul
2020)
 Sales experience
 Knowledge of insurance industries,
mutual funds and securities
 Effective knowledge of Microsoft Word,
Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
 Experience providing quality financial
advises
 Designing financial strategies (Caselli
and Gatti 2017)
‘SOFT’ SKILLS:
Emerging jobs / roles:
Specialist in
 Corporate finance
 Corporate recovery
 Financial accounting
 Forensic accounting
 Risk assessment
 Mutual fund advisor
 Financial advisor for tax and insurance
(Philippon 2015)
Industry challenges:
 Technology risk
 Operational risk
 Reputational risk
 Human element of cyber risk
 Credit and investment risk
 Failure to engage customers
Traditional jobs / roles:
 Banking
 Accountant
 Insurance agents
 Tax assessor
 auditor

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 Changing legislation and government
policies.
 Effective communication, interpersonal
and negotiation skill.
 Customer service skills
 Time management skills
 Teamwork
 Flexible approach
 Target driven mindset
 Effective decision making skills
My TOP 5 organizations:
1. PPIA organization
2. CityZen organization
3. HKSI Hong Kong Securities and
Investment Institute.
4. MAICD: Member of the Australian
Institute of Company Directors.
5. SSA: Self-Managed Super Fund Specialist
Adviser.
Employment challenges:
 skill gap
 creating effective organizational culture
 shortage of mid-career challenge
 candidates have more power and choices
 inability to retain millennial talents (Berk
and Binsbergen 2015)

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3.b My Industry Requirements and Trends analysis
The industry of chosen is finance which is constantly growing and highly dependent
on the economy the market. The growth areas of financial industry are mainly related with
the growth of artificial intelligence and their usage in finance industry, government oversight
regulatory, compliance, growth of penetration and government policy support. This growing
trend of Finance industry have posed some very important challenges stuff the financial
services as highly depend upon the changing nature of economic policies and overall
economic situation of the country, the experts remain always updated with that changes so
that the challenges do not affect their career as well as the interest of their clients. There are
issues with reputation and operation of the firms effectively. The more reputed forms get
more exposure in the market and the less reputed forms despite being more operational than
the others cannot what attract new customers. The industry challenges also include the
technological risks. As the financial services have become more technological oriented and
dependent upon the advancement of artificial intelligence, the threat of human element in the
cyber operation enhance risks. Moreover failure to engage the customers is another threat for
the growing competitive industry of finance.
Initially the industry of Finance used to offer traditional jobs like accountant,
insurance agents, auditor and tax assistants. Now the industry has offered new and emerging
job roles like specialist in financial accounting and forensic accounting, financial risk
assessor, corporate finance expert and corporate recovery experts. In addition to this the
mutual fund Advisors and financial Advisors for insurance and Taxes have grown popularity
in the recent times.
The finance industry is constantly changing therefore this present trend will be changing also.
The companies like PPIA organization and CityZen organization are asking for or highly
efficient finance experts having both technical and soft skills, may not ask for the same in
next 5 years. As mentioned before the technological advancement has regulated the trend of

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Financial sector, therefore constant changes in the technological efficiency the technical skills
of the persons will also be changed. For example the millennial are more efficient than and
the experts working traditional organizations for decades. Similarly the new candidates will
be adopting new skills both technical as well as soft to match the criteria of the Finance
companies. The employment challenges will also increases as the skill gap will be increasing
and the candidates will have more power for bargaining their choices. In addition to this the
companies will be more cross-cultural therefore maintaining a positive organizational culture
following one particular national culture will be difficult. However the diversity e will be
helping to make decisions from analyzing the risks from different perspectives which will
enhance efficiency of the firms.
4. My Gap Analysis
4 a My Gap Analysis table
My Current Technical
Skills Required Technical Skills My Current Soft Skills. Required Soft Skills
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
13
50
10
50
Chart Title
Series 1 Column1 Column2
4 b My Gap Analysis:
I have analyzed the knowledge gap on the basis of the industry trend and
employability. In this context, it can be stated that the industry which needs minimum
experience of the candidates to be bachelor in business finance and all the knowledge of the

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technicalities to support the customers, I possess comparatively less. For career readiness, I
need to have the relevant academic skills which can make me understand various models and
concepts of finance to develop my career readiness. I do not have well developed academic
skills that can help me to prove myself as a ready candidate applied for a position of financial
advisor. In addition to this, though I am more or less possess the knowledge of task
management skills but these are not well developed. The gap lies in the fact that the industry
asks for talents where the candidates will be efficient in handing Microsoft Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and Outlook which I do not possess. In addition to this, I lack people skill and self-
management skills based on which I can reduce the knowledge gap. I also lack intention to review
those skills which I have already developed but need improvement.
5. Conclusion:
Therefore, it can be concluded that for being an effective financial advisor, I need to
be more efficient in developing my technical skills as well as the soft skills. Despite the fact
that I am an idealist person, I cannot reflect those positive aspects in me into work. Therefore,
the career readiness factors are not present in me. Being a mediator I am passionate and
energetic but lack the public speaking skills due to the shy feature of a mediator. Among the
weaknesses, the most important is the introvert nature in me. Moreover, I have not scored
well in the SHAPES test that reflects my strategies, skills, habits, preferences and many
others. These reflect that I need to work more on the development of the technical skills like
knowledge in the insurance industries, mutual funds and securities and every types of risks
that the industries and employability may affect my career. In addition to this, in order to get
placed in a financial corporation found out by me in the dashboard, I need to develop
communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills and increase a target driven mindset for
flexible approach. These will help me to bridge the knowledge gap between the expectations
of the industry and my own.

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6. References
Benešová, A. and Tupa, J., 2017. Requirements for education and qualification of people in
Industry 4.0. Procedia Manufacturing, 11, pp.2195-2202.
Berk, J.B. and Van Binsbergen, J.H., 2015. Measuring skill in the mutual fund
industry. Journal of Financial Economics, 118(1), pp.1-20.
Caselli, S. and Gatti, S. eds., 2017. Structured finance: Techniques, products and market.
Springer.
Cavalcante, R.C., Brasileiro, R.C., Souza, V.L., Nobrega, J.P. and Oliveira, A.L., 2016.
Computational intelligence and financial markets: A survey and future directions. Expert
Systems with Applications, 55, pp.194-211.
Hammami, Y. and Oueslati, A., 2017. Measuring skill in the Islamic mutual fund industry:
Evidence from GCC countries. Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and
Money, 49, pp.15-31.
Philippon, T., 2015. Has the US finance industry become less efficient? On the theory and
measurement of financial intermediation. American Economic Review, 105(4), pp.1408-38.

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7. Appendices:
Appendix: 1
Appendix 2.

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Appendix3.

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Appendix 4.