There comes a time when every financial modeler must pull away from the cells, the spreadsheets, the workbooks, and regain perspective. Formulas becoming four lines long, circular references popping up, and morale falling faster than CTRL-Z can be hit.  It's time for...

Between our various roles on Wall Street and even at Enstruct, we’ve seen a lot of financial engineers’ resumes, tested them, trained them, and watched careers evolve.  However, like math itself, the career path of a financial engineer can either be extremely linear...

When we started developing our financial modeling testing platform, we thought the most likely customers would be companies looking to assess new hire candidates and using our subset analysis to potentially help with placement decisions.  We quickly learned that many...

They languish behind the unused "Fx" button on the formula bar.  When you use them for the first time you aren't quite sure how to use them again.  However, once you really start using them you don't understand how you did certain tasks before.  The following five...

While working with many different financial institutions, we noticed an interesting trend on how banks were organized to handle their analytics.  Some would direct their resources to building a single model that all employees used for their analyses, while others...

Warning, this post may sound like blasphemy for seasoned financial modelers or any experienced Excel user.  Using Excel shortcuts as quickly as possible has become a sign of a skilled modeler.  It’s become so ingrained in the finance world that there are...

Assessing technical skills is not easy.  While working at an investment bank and interviewing many junior hires, I asked a colleague how he assessed their technical ability.  The response I received was, “Oh, I have a great question, I ask them how many tennis balls...

4 Signs of an Excellent Financial Modeler “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how do you score yourself in Excel?”  Quite possibly the most common and sadly the least insightful technical question an interviewer can ask a job candidate.  ...