BlackRock technicians, get ready to talk about the latest. The New Yorker Essay with your latest co-workers on the block. Liberal arts majors are coming to work for finance.
English and history majors aren't necessarily known for wanting consulting gigs, but those who want to work for the man are finding that the man suddenly wants them back. Investment banks usually have their pick of the dirt for recent graduates who become the next crop of analysts. Yet as executives are beginning to turn their heads from the former ballet of the ball, finding STEM-oriented candidates in general just isn't cutting it.
And no one signals the tide turning toward the right-brained applicant more than BlackRock's chief operating officer. Addressing the of luck In The Future of Finance: Technology and Transformation, Robert Goldstein notes that asset management firms are trying to get a bit arty.
“We believe more and more that we need people who are in history, in English, and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology,” said Goldstein of BlackRock's new hiring strategy.
Of course, that doesn't mean the usually-favorite techie is going away. Acknowledging that “a little over a quarter of the company” are technicians, Goldstein added that “this is something we've been doing for a long time.” He added that as BlackRock's belief that they need technical experts grows, interest in candidates from other backgrounds also grows.
Suffice it to say that the search for a good fit has increased, as Goldstein (himself a former BlackRock analyst) explained that the company's strategy is to hire a large pool of analysts from universities.
A company is motivated to seek out unique applicants in part because of differences in thinking.
“It's the diversity of thought and the diversity of people and the diversity of looking at different ways of solving a problem that really drives innovation,” he said.
AI brings about a liberal arts consultant.
BlackRock isn't the only company looking to a new type of consultant: creators. This desire for liberal arts grads is partly fueled by the rise of AI, which creates demand for different skill sets. “Questioning, creativity and innovation will be very important because I think AI will create more capacity for the creative thought process,” said Matt Candy, global managing partner for generative AI at IBM Consulting. good fortune This past December. Coding, perhaps, declines in importance as generative AI becomes more popular. But those with a language background can take advantage of the new market by becoming quick engineers for the aforementioned tools.
And Goldman Sachs global co-head George Lee said the sentiment echoed. Lee said in a recent Bloomberg Television interview that the use of AI will pave the way for a “reinvention of the liberal arts.” Incorporating this new innovation will “create a lot of opportunities,” Lee points out, noting that some jobs will no longer be useful and will be replaced by new ones.
“Some of the skills that really stand out in the world to collaborate with this new intelligence are critical thinking, understanding logic and rhetoric, the ability to be creative,” he continued. “It will allow non-technical people to do a lot more — and, by the way, begin to perform what were previously considered technical tasks.”
As robots take over Wall Street, so do liberal arts students.