I attended a Bloomberg
symposium at their headquarters in Finsbury Square, London on Thursday 20th
September. Due to the role I do I need to be able to support my Economics &
Finance students in accessing financial data so I thought this might be useful.
I arrived in time
for breakfast at 8am at the very swanky premises - there was already a buzz and
even the vast tanks of tropical fish seemed to be animated. This might have had
something to do with the amount of neon and fluorescence in the building though.
I didn't take any photos as I didn't want to risk being floored by the security
guards, of which there were many.
There were a
range of speakers including those who worked for Bloomberg, city recruitment
companies and academics. The audience was a range of economics and business
lecturers with a few careers officers and a smattering of librarians.
I didn't really
know what to expect from the day, thinking perhaps it would be either a
training session or a big sales pitch. It was mainly the latter with some
discussion about the nature of education thrown in for good measure.
Richard Hong from
Bloomberg started the program off by announcing that in the last twelve months ten
UK universities had subscribed to Bloomberg with a total of 108 terminals and
that despite being asked for simulated material to help train students he was
instead offering the real thing. They have started offering more training to
universities and are currently rolling out a Bloomberg aptitude test. I found out my institution already delivers this so I am currently trying to find out a bit more about the process.
Throughout the
day, we listened to a speech about the purpose of higher education, given an overview
of the Bloomberg terminals, told about the Bloomberg Aptitude Test and
Bloomberg’s recruitment policy but the most interesting element turned out to
be a panel discussion which started off by looking at what companies looked for
in students when recruiting to the differences in UK and US higher education
systems.
·
Bloomberg
is seen as the 'Microsoft office ' of financial professionals' so it is
expected that students have some knowledge of it
·
Universities
are still expected to teach students how to learn, to subject arguments to
intellectual rigour, to use context, self-management and professional
communication & etiquette - if universities do this then the industry will
teach them the technical skills
·
The
company has a flat structure with no handholding so workers are expected to use
their initiative – we should therefore be encouraging this in our students
·
Enthusiasm,
talent and hard work will prepare you for most things in life, including the
workplace. When thinking about teaching employability skills staff should bear
this in mind.
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