hi everyone it's good to see you thank you for joining us on managing your well i'm your host deborah frasier welcome to our program the goal of our program is to bring timely and relevant information on wealth management topics to  audience and to interview guess who would help you make better and more informed decisions about managing your well today our topic is navigating the careers landscape and here to help us discuss our topic is the collins a little window i never thanks for having me you're welcome and when do is the director of corporate relations at the bin high school of finance at princeton university window has a big role as director of corporate relations and been one center she worked closely with the center's corporate affiliates she also works with the advisory council alumni red network and career services and in addition to her role she runs the bin hind center speaker series the corporate affiliates program their boot camp alumni events and their mentoring programs and that's just to mention a few of her responsibilities the window as i look at your bio and we'll talk a little more about it i definitely see a theme of communication and education so tell me a little about how you came to the been one said ok thanks deborah and you thanks for joining us for the speaker series last year two thousand yeah it is so so i first i think i always wanted to be a communicator when my when i was a little girl my believe it or not my role model was jane pauley on the to write i was a journalism major at the university of north carolina chapel hill i work for the daily tar heel i worked at several newspapers during my sophomore and junior year in college so i already kind of knew what that writing and when occasion was something i really enjoyed and then after graduation i went to washington d c but learned that you really had to be at the very top op of the profession to work somewhere like the washington post so i ended up starting out n working with writing newsletters for trade associations which was a very interesting you learned about industry and all different types of businesses the chamber of commerce for example and just sort of how the industry works so that was a great experience but then i had the chance to join the national radio broadcasters association and then the associated press and their radio network and i was writing you know doing their public relations and communications and sort of the theme there was i was in the right place at the right time when one association joined another i was going to be out of a job and met somebody from the a p who said come join us and that was very very fortuitous so that's sort of a lesson to talk a little bit later in you know you never know where your career is going to take you so i had a chance to work for the associated press for eight years in more of a corporate communications role and then when i had my first daughter and i was working in new york and i didn't really want to commute after getting that first call saying there was a fever so that's how i ended up at dow jones in outside of london and worked with them on their the launch of personal journal which was the for the first wall street journal dot com and then ended up joining merrill lynch where i got to where we'd never marry and i was vice president published city for a private client which is their wealth management group and as merrill lynch sort of changed its focus i ended up working in the banking world and did business development and also training for financial advisors where i also got to work with you there and then  was contacted by a friend at princeton university who's said we've got this communications for all would you be interested so i had the chance to interview there and i wasn't looking for another job it was just worked for maryland for eleven years and loved what i did but it was very exciting to think about higher education and thinking about a change and so i've been at princeton for the past ten years wow and now i'm in a very different role i started out in a communications role and then i'm sort of worked in the office of the dean for research working on communications and now part of my job is communications but it's really helping students be communicators as opposed to me running the communications function so i never knew i was going to be from a journalism to where i am today is very different but i guess the common themes are connecting with people never burning bridges and helping commit you know  make connect relationships and being ready for a new opportunity you know being prepared and being open to them so you're the really the perfect person to have in this role and they have discussion today and what you decide is pointed out so many different things that we would one are too ignorant to learn being open to opportunity been willing to take on a new challenge you you taught yourself so much when you went and wrote a trainee trade industries i mean you learned all about many different industries that you probably never would have been involved in before and it's help me understand a little how your career has gone because i've often wondered how anything goes well now i see a lot of how you did that ok that was great ok so let's talk about how you help students in their career so esther rector corporate relations how do you help you help students who are working on their masters in finance and undergrads right so how do you help them with their career so as you may know princeton is a liberal arts institution and its focus on helping soon it's the better thinkers researchers problem solvers and people of the world and then finance is not so it's not a major and it's not there's not a business school at princeton but we do have a master in finance that compline combines the interdisciplinary areas of operations research financial engineering and economics and we have a you know nobel prize winning economics faculty there so it was a great place to have students from all disciplines come and study finance only finance in more of a quantitative arena and then there's also an undergraduate certificate in finance degree and degree certificate which is like a minor and it allows students who might be a philosophy major art history major psychology major economics major then dig deeper just a few core courses in the finance arena as well as electives and research so those students are all  very well served by our career services office but career services is looking at sort of career and life vision and the big picture and i helped connect the students specifically with opportunities in finance technology other than a wonderful education at princeton is an amazing alumni network princeton at the long my network is probably one of the top in the entire country yes it's phenomenal and they belong i come back and alumni who were in the certificate in finance program with new juniors who are coming into the certificate in finance program looking at their survey surveying the students finding out what are their career interests right now and then pairing them with mentors in industry in sales and trading in hedge funds in government work at the federal reserve in data science in technology and wealth manager you know every on so i will help connect them with internships and we're services does a great job in creating a network of recruiters on campus coming to campus doing information sessions posting jobs online but what's what are my role is really more to help educate the students about what's the difference between investment banking and sales and trading what's the difference between wealth management and asset management how are they connected and what is the skill set that's required to you know in each of those areas and how can they connect their passion what they're good at with what with one of those areas so so i'm not planing the only right into internships per se the for the undergrads for the master in finance i am making connections through our corporate affiliates through our many partners through our alumni mentors and helping students navigate the career landscape in those areas because  for a master student they're not an m b a they're not a p h d they're us they're sort of a different animal and some recruiters are familiar with the quantitative skill set that these students have and so i'm more at engaged in helping them  identify opportunities in many cases those students have work experience and so they're changing you know say from technology to finance or operations to trading or consulting to banking you know they're making a change and so i'm helping them figure out what's going to be the best area for them based on what's going on what are the trends going on in the industry who's hiring who's not what areas are changing we're going to get to let's go back to entering the internship search for a moment what are some of the biggest mistakes that students make when looking for interning great quickly to move i would say the first question the first mistake is assuming just because you went to princeton that you're going to be the top candidate you know everyone you know there are so many great candidates from great schools around the country around the world applying for jobs in finance and technology and just having really good grades and good s a t s and g r reuse and that's not enough to a student really has to figure out what are they what are their strengths what are they passionate about how can they combine their aptitude their skills and what motivates them what gets them excited you know on a daily basis and then how do they differentiate themselves to that employer or in the marketplace another big mistake is a student will apply online and they'll assume that's going to be enough online even through the online portal at princeton it's not enough because there are two hundred three hundred other students at princeton applying for that same role but they do everything online so they think that's sufficient as the would so how do you counsel them what do the things you tell them they should do well one has to network one has to look at their the people skills so just because a student is really smart and great grades great scores lots of activities they need to be able to write a thank you note write an email that says i enjoyed meeting you love talking about x y z i thought it was interesting we had the same interest in alive and so how did they how did they make a connection that's going to be lasting and then how do they stay in touch in a respectable way another big mistake and this is for a lot of people not just students and link linked in i always tell students and alumni don't link into someone unless you have met them or have made a personal connection through someone else to just link into somebody just because you like their profile it's sort of an invasion of privacy and it can be annoying so you really want to be careful how you use linked in linked in is a great tool and you want to make sure you have a great photo great headline great summary great profile but you don't want to assume just because someone went to your school that they're going to link in you need to have another one other layer of can communication the other good advice there we talked you mentioned trends so you so that everyone's got this digital profile and that is the same for finance and technology you know in the world of finance and technology the jobs are moving towards how do you help companies be smarter about their clients how do you tailor and customize portfolios trading strategies economic outlooks for individuals and that can all be done online and so jobs are moving from you know people jobs trading jobs to exchanges electronic exchanges so the ability to understand what's moving electronically what's moving on line and how but how personal advice and guidance fits in there because people still need to play a big role and where the value added is for the you know the the personal touch in finance so for example in sales and trading there's you know a lot of confusion around the it you know britain even the e u and so there were a lots of you know a move towards foreign exchange moving towards electron exchanges as because of the financial crisis dodd frank created all these rules and regulations that said you know i need to have traders and i who are making markets you can have a transparent market electronically well with bricks it i think there's still a need to have a trader who understands what's going on in the e u who understands what's going on in england and what are the concerns on cross currency exchanges and how to hedge risk and all those things so there's going to be a role still for the person who understands understand you know how it how to code in some cases and what length programming languages can help one area finance versus another but not everybody is a great coder so there's going to be roles for business development sales training marketing advice and guidance so that you know that's i know you had mentioned before technology and customization segmentation and also computer science so i took a look at some of the different areas of pewter science so it's described as automating algorithm rhythm process this scale practical application of information and computation some of the areas with include computation coding programming graphics security databases software engineering networks artificial intelligence and coming back to security cryptography encryption and decryption any of and the list went on yeah so how do you take a student let's say who's majoring in history well i mean yard school of finance so we're just taking the step back to to help everyone yeah yeah didn't this major in history how do you take what they're passionate about and then help them make a bridge over into this more technology computers financial savvy you know what i would do how would you advice on what i think first and speaking of history i wish i'd taken more history so my message is not everyone go become a commune computer scientists it's just to understand which areas of business are moving and becoming more computerized so they're still going to be roles for people who love history who love sociology psychology the the social sciences that aren't you know the computer scientists but they're going to need an under understand what their role is in an organization versus where you know automation and electronic communication will exists for example just education we have all these you know now of course  and all these online education rat forms but those are never going to replace in total the academic the professor the one on one people still want to be in a classroom with each other there's certainly going to be many opportunities to supplement that kind of education but the historian the person who understands who's studied who's done the research they're going to still play a role in research and in teaching no matter what happened they're still going to be that they might be doing an i think it's it also it people can be too computer focused in my mind to unplug and to just you know learn to think and problem solve without you know a calculator and without a computer i think is important skill set so in those cases looking at what industries are not are looking for problem solving understanding the big picture economy or relationship finance and technology as just happens to be the areas i'm working with dude and so on but it almost seems so in the in the way because it's what we talk about and we talk about technology and computers and so it makes you wonder you know if you really want to major in english how are you going to use that in the marketplace and how are you going to apply it well case of an english major they're going to learn to they're going to be great readers and great writers and write so they might work for you know in the marketing field and help write you know for web sites so they don't have to code to write on websites but they're going to you know they're still great communicators are going to be needed are continue to be needed and they'll be finance what course in college would you reckon mina student take to be prepared for in a career you know well i would say you know computer science certainly is would be a great introductory course just to understand the trends but statistics or accounting i think also helps people understand say if you want to go work for a business and you need to know how the you know the balance sheet works for that business how design company make money how are you how are you being paid what you know if you're being paid based on production in our revenues on cash flow so i think everyone could benefit from taking some sort of accounting course or and or statistics where you're going to learn you know probability how  how terms of data science how a company is going to look at a large data set and then apply certain statistical theories to analyze that data so the either history and why do you think it's so relevant and important well when you look at what's going on in the world history repeats itself i mean the financial crisis we had been bringing back on campus and been helped found our our program  and talked about how in the great depression depression and before that the first stock market crisis and several other stock market crisis mirrored what happened in the financial crisis in terms of too much leverage past you know the past best results are not indicative of future results but they start lee can give you an idea of what's happened in the past as to prepare for the future and globalization i know one of the one of the passions i had in my personal life you know i had and a financial adviser of many years and i took on a role international role as a coach for financial advisors who warn teens and part of what was driving my desire to live abroad and work abroad was i had a ten year old son and i really wanted him to be a global thinker and so we lived in london from age ten to thirteen for him and we came back home to visit after nine months or so since everyone was asking him was the most important thing you learned you know since you've been you've been in europe and we any love soccer so we all thought he was going to say something about soccer you know arsenal in manchester you use these techniques versus how i played in america but what he said was i was surprised to find out that the u s currency isn't the strongest currency in the world you know the the the pound and the euro at the time  stronger than us dollar and he went into this whole economic discussion and i was like ok well but the point is he is a global thinker you know he pays attention to what's going on in the we're all in that was something i thought was critically important so where they are you know your child is going to take the trips to stay with a family in in london for three months or they're really you know that  kong and europe and africa and asia so it's i'd say being flexible and adaptable about where you're going to be is is critical and you know i do see students interning for corporations as as early her freshman year and that's great to have that work experience but also has a low i think students need to go out and see the world and so to not you know be so focused on a potential career that they miss out on opportunities to be a kid and to explore and you know if you can combine the two that's the best right to learn a lot of things  so from what you've learned at princeton's and we want to make we only have a couple more minutes and we want to make this practical for a lot of parents without being too controlling what advice would you give parents of how they can help their students plan their career  least plan you know what they're going to do in college and counted guide them at all well i think that student parents need to let their kids be themselves and not try to you know be just like them or vocation and your avocation so i say let your kids be themselves empower them but don't enable it you don't want you know you can't you have to teach a man to fish don't give him a fish so don't just line up internships for your child in here do this job and then you know they need to earn it they need to really appreciate their own work in their own investment and yes you might help make the connection it's going to be up to them ime any less quick parting words i think those out of isocaloric think well i hear from lots of older not just students but people in who are making career transitions and so a lot of this advice and guidance is relevant for the person that maybe has been a stay at home mom or stay at home father or his books or switching industries so that they get networking is key to finding what you're passionate about different cheat yourself and be computer savvy but you don't have to be a coder to be successful in this new world