"You can't get to wonderful without passing through all right."
–Bill Withers
Competition
Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge
The Financial Modelling World Cup has launched the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge. The Challenge will give students of all levels the opportunity to learn more about Excel, financial modelling and data analysis. Entry is free to students. The finals will be held in Tucson later this year. All finalists will have their travel costs covered and the Challenge has a prize pool of $30,000. Students will also have an opportunity to highlight their skills to potential employers. Find out more.
Training
How to create a culture of continuous learning
This video is an extract from Almanac's course on improving decision making. It looks at how to prototype and run small experiments to development a culture of continuous learning. The interesting part is how to develop and validate experiments to avoid the common issue of continuing to do things in a certain way because "that's how they've always been done".
Book
The Choice Factory
Human bias has been a topic I've included a lot in the Miscellany. I believe it's essential knowledge for analysts and modellers. Our job is to inform decision making, and before we can influence decisions, we need to understand what drives them. The Choice Factory is entertaining and accessible with 25 short chapters each looking at a different bias. Although it's written from a marketing perspective, the lessons apply much more widely.
Article
the 4 day work week brings no loss in productivity
More than 70 UK-based companies have been taking part in a six-month experiment in which their employees get a paid day off each week. Now more then half way through the experiment, 35 of the 41 companies report that they are “likely” or “extremely likely” to consider continuing the four-day workweek. All but two of the 41 companies said productivity was either the same or had improved. Six companies said productivity had significantly improved. Read more in this NYT article. The big question I still have is how this can be applied in professional services, where client responsiveness is key.
Modeller’s Miscellany Jobs
If you have a financial modelling related position you’d like us to include, please email miscellany@fullstackmodeller.com.
Featured:
Data Visualisation Specialist - Datatech Analytics - England (Remote)
Financial Analyst - Advanced - Birmingham, UK (On Site)
Financial Analyst - Paychex - Rochester, NY, USA (On Site)
Senior Financial Analyst - Ascension - USA (Remote)
Financial Analyst - City of Kingston - Kingston, Canada (On Site)
Intermediate Financial Analyst - 1Password - Canada (Remote)
Senior Commercial Financial Analyst - ROLLER - Melbourne, Australia (Remote)
FP&A Analyst - RAA - Adelaide, South Australia (Hybrid)
Senior Financial Analyst - BCD Travel - India (Remote)
And finally...
