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What is your profession/industry? Until five years ago, I was a senior financial analyst. What do you do? A financial analyst naturally has very high analytical skills and is able to see both the big picture as well as the minute details. A financial analyst compares two or more options or courses of action available and makes the best decision from a financial standpoint, and when necessary, also from a qualitative standpoint (e.g., business reputation, potential legal or environmental issues, etc). The ability to study, in depth, what each of the investment options entails and how it affects the company is at the heart of what a financial analyst does. What skills/experience do you need? Experience An entry level position is great to immerse you in the world of business cases. As you gain experience, the more business cases you conduct, the better you get at it. Technical skills At a minimum, an undergraduate degree in the field of Finance or something similar. Professional skills Excellent analytical/decision-making/problem-solving skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, research skills, computer skills, time management skills, and organizational skills. What inspires you about your work? I absolutely loved being a business case analyst. Enabling Senior Management to make a well-informed decision based on our business case studies and then actually seeing the selected investment project through to completion and doing what we called a "post-mortem" analysis was invigorating - it enabled us to learn from what we did wrong and also reinforce what we did right. It was constantly a challenging and fast-paced environment that kept us wanting to do more, learn more, accomplish more and I loved being challenged in this manner: being pushed to always excel and be the best analyst I can be. Nothing is more fulfilling or satisfying than knowing you did the absolute best job you could. And like I said, seeing the results of our labour made it all worthwhile. What kind of person do you think it takes to do what you do? Someone who is highly motivated, aspires to realize his/her full potential, is very attentive to detail, is very diligent and who can perform well in a very demanding environment.