How CFOs Come from non Finance backgrounds

There is an article by CFO.com that looks at the number of sitting CFOs with an engineering background, and they found it to be 1,466 CFOs with an engineering background. And by looking at the profiles of CFOs they listed here in the article, the first one is a CFO of a big public company, Visa, and his background is from the Indian Institute of Technology with an undergrad degree in engineering. The second one, um, also a chief, and his background is in engineering. Here you can see bachelor's engineering. The third, same way, a chief financial officer, uh, with a degree in electrical engineering. So what does these numbers and career profiles here tell us about the conventional story that we all heard since we graduated university, which is to reach the top of the hierarchy as a finance professional, you need to have started out in investment banking, equity research, or accounting or some other finance-related career. This here tells us a slightly different story, which is that you could have started in engineering, data science, education, or some other career which will add some dimensions to your experience because as an engineer, you need to learn how to conceptualize problems and find solutions for them, right? So adds dimension to your background and then slowly segue into a finance-related career if that's what you like. And so in this video, we'll talk about the three horsemen or the three things that I've seen work for my colleagues who transitioned from non-finance into a finance career. So that's what we're discussing here today. Let's go. All right, so the three horsemen of your strategy for transitioning from non-finance into a finance career are going to be: 1, work experience; 2, resume; and 3, your postgraduate education or certification. And I ask that throughout the video, if you like the content, to go ahead and hit the like button because that's how you're gonna help me out in return for me helping you out with these tips here. So let's talk about the first one, which is your work experience. All right, so with work experience, what I'm suggesting here is that you're gonna be slowly over time transitioning from what you're doing in your core job into a finance-like or finance-related activity within your job. So let's take an example here just to drive this home a little bit more. Let's say you're an engineer working on a project like building a bridge. right? So typically what that would entail is creating the initial drawings for the bridge, making a plan for buying the material and hiring the labor necessary for it, and then generally just project managing the building process of that bridge, right? What I'm suggesting here is that you're going to find finance-related activity within that project, like creating a budget, for example. So the two areas that are going to be finance-related in that project could be budgeting or procurement, right? So we're budgeting. You're going to get closer to the financial statements of building that project, whether there's going to be some sort of income from collecting tolls from riders who go onto that bridge, and then the expense or the cost, which is the amortized cost of building that bridge over time, right? So you're going to get into the, the process of creating the budget for building the bridge, which is going to include the cost of labor, cost of material, and how that's going to be recouped over time, either through revenue or either through some kind of federal or government grants over time. So the budgeting process is, is going to be very helpful for you in this case. The second option is going to be procurement, or the process of buying things necessary for that bridge, and that's going to entail negotiating contracts, finding the best pricing, and working in general with the team on optimizing the cost for the things that you're buying for that bridge. So now you're an engineer working on that bridge but at the same time you're working on a finance-related activity that's going to help you segue yourself into working in finance in the future. If you're enjoying my style of teaching and ready to invest in a comprehensive financial analyst course, uh, be sure to check my FP&A Academy where I teach you the entire function of the financial analyst over the course of 8 hours. If you're interested, check out the link in the description below. We begin by establishing a 5-year financial plan for the company, then we draft together the budget for the upcoming year. We then learn about the financial statement analysis using real-life data. We finally discuss the best practices in creating management presentations. If you're interested in joining me in the course, find the link in the description below, head over to the website, and check out the detailed curriculum. All right, so with your resume, or your second horseman in this case, what we're talking about here is that with the first point we talked about is work experience, is that you transition slowly to work on budget or procurement on the project. And that applies not only to engineers, but it could be applied to education, computer science, anything, or any career generally includes projects that needs to be managed and includes budget and buying things, right? So that's, uh, your work experience. Now with the resume, there are two things here too that we can work on to make sure that we can transition successfully into finance. The first one is that you need to do enough of budgeting or procurement, uh, to be able to put it in your resume, and generally be able to talk about it in a job interview, right? That's the first thing. And the second is that slowly over time, uh, these things that relate to budgeting or forecasting, procurement, are gonna make up 50% or more of what you do. So slowly, when you look at your work experience on your resume in that particular job, 50% or half of what you do there is gonna be finance related. Right? The more the better, right? So you can show your knack for finance and your ability to tackle finance-related projects. All right, gang, so we covered work experience, we covered resume, and now we're going to talk about your third horseman of this strategy, which is going to be your postgraduate education. So most likely, now that you're working in your domain— engineering, computer science, education— you have an undergrad degree in that domain. What I'm suggesting here is that you invest 2 years of your life. I know it's not a small investment, 2 years of your life, um, getting an MBA degree. And MBA is Master's in Business Administration, uh, which could be done online. There are programs that are online, uh, combined maybe with going on campus for a few times for projects, testing, and things like that. Um, these MBA programs come in various concentrations, uh, so they could be in marketing, leadership, business management, accounting, finance. The ones that we are talking about here and focused on are going to be in finance, corporate finance, or accounting, right? It's an investment in your career, not a small one— 2 years and possibly $50 grand— but it is an investment in your career, and ultimately it's going to make a huge difference if you want to transition into finance. As a second option, if you don't want to invest 2 years of your life doing this, right, There is a CMA designation, so you can apply and sit for an examination for CMA or Certified Management Accountant, which is going to be nice. It's going to be— you learn through it. It's going to go next to your name and your LinkedIn profile, and it's going to add value to your career as you transition into finance. So these are the— to recap, the three horsemen of your strategy are going to be work experience, transition slowly over time, taking over finance-related stuff in the project within your work. Uh, second is resume. Build up what you do slowly over time to maybe get to 50% of what you do in your job that's going to be finance-sounding at least, or finance-related. And then the third horseman is going to be postgraduate education, taking an MBA program as an option one, or if, if not, maybe a CMA designation. So that's been the topic of this video today. I hope that you liked it, it added value to you. If it did, smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, and I don't know, if you know somebody who is interested, maybe wanted to make a move, send this video along their way, and I'll see you on the next one.