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July 14, 2009
Risk Career Series - 7 Traits & Habits for a Risk Management Career - Part 1
I am starting this blog series in response to many requests for career advice and guidance that we all keep getting from time to time from young bright aspirants! Also when i started my blog i listed the below 10 Risk mgmt frontiers ideas, so next few blogs are going to be adressing the ideas not addressed so far.
1. Risk Visualization
2. Next Generation Risk & Compliance Architectures
3. Risk Pricing Clusters
4. Risk & Compliance Taxonomy
5. Pan Regional Risk Data Grids
6. Digital Assets Mgmt
7. Cross Industry Risk mgmt practices
8. Incubating Centers of Risk Mgmt Excellence & practices
9. Risk Management Career Options
10. Embedding Risk Mgmt & Compliance in an organisational DNA
My thanks and sincere apologies to all of you who took time to write to me. To some I have responded already and I really wish I could respond to all of you individually on your interest to work in the Risk Mgmt area, but a more efficient way to respond would be via this PRMIA blog.
Let me start by saying to all the young & old, inquisitive, brilliant minds out there, we need more of you in this dynamic and exciting profession. So please do keep flocking to the Risk profession.
This is not a one off blog. I will keep posting regularly on this topic regularly. I also hope that this blog topic will evolve into a Risk Mgmt Career thread with lot of questions, and inputs from the more seasoned Risk mgmt gurus and experts from the industry, so we all get a much wider perspective on entry in the Risk mgmt profession. Perhaps we can evolve into an annual PRMIA Global Risk Mgmt Career webcast.
Being involved in the selection process of the PRM candidate of the year for the last 2 years and looking at the caliber of candidates, it seems a logical extension of developing the Risk mgmt profession.
Note: Certainly do not consider my thoughts as absolute truth as they are colored by my limited personal experiences. Do take them with a pinch of salt and beware of the extra mix of continental and asian spices thrown in.
Having been fortunate enough to have lived and worked in 6 countries so far and delivered Risk projects in more than 10 countries, I see that young aspirants to Risk Mgmt industry have the same issues and questions world over. Let me try to answer some of them from a financial services industry perspective first. And will color them with examples from other industry sectors that I know of;
Q1: What does it take to be in Risk Management field ?
Response: There are 7 traits and habits that I see that consistently define a Risk Mgmt professional. This may be embodied in many other similar profession but I find these specially enhanced in top notch Risk professionals. These is just a listing of a few characteristics. It’s brilliant to have all these qualities, but one does need to have a combination of at least 4-5 skills.
1. Intellectual curiousity & Rigor of thought - Risk Management is about being intellectually curious (or being a busy body as they say in South East Asia) about what, where, when, how and who.
2. Constant and Dynamic Changes - Be able to deal with a dynamically changing environment that one works in
3. Good grounding in at least two or more disciplines - Math, Finance, Stats, Financial Engineering, Quant Finance, IT
4. Constantly Learning- If one does not believe in continuous learning, this area is not for him/her as one will find it hard to keep up with the pace of change
5. Detail oriented - At more junior level, have interest to drill down into details when required. Risk management is about details; As one goes sr. the details evolve into bigger picture but still need to detailed oriented many times.
6. Tech savy - Be it Microsoft Excel, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Microsoft ACCESS, and be able to learn different Risk applications and technology.
7. Being able to break down complex concepts into simple terms, communicate and explain clearly
Having listed the above, I must also highlight the fact that Risk Mgmt being a very vast discipline, the above skills are by no means exhaustive.
Let me stop here and continue on in my next blog. Pls. do write in your comments, questions directly on this blog, instead of individual emails. Happy Risk mgmt job hunting.
Posted by spachava at July 14, 2009 08:33 PM
"Communication" must also form a part of the above list. A Risk Manager's continual challenge is to communciate in a manner which positively resonates with the other stakeholders. Failing this, all other RM tools/techniques/capabilities come to nought. Given the dynamics of our ever-changing business environment, this becomes an on-going process of raising the bar on crisp and relevant communication.
Posted by: Chandrasekar at August 4, 2009 01:28 PM
Fully agree Chandrashekar; I do mention it briefly in the last of my traits ie point 7 as Communicate effectively, but agree that this skill is a critical element of any Risk manager's effectiveness and relationship with the business lines. So important that its worth calling it out separately.
Posted by: sai sireesh at August 5, 2009 12:20 AM
