Hi Robert,

Thanks for getting in touch. I think studying Economics at university was a lot more theoretical and abstract than studying it at A-level, hence the relevance of the course to what I do is definitely more to do with the indirect skills I learned rather than the actual concepts. As a result, excluding analytical and mathematical skills as you asked, the most helpful skills I developed are more about going to university rather than pertaining specifically to studying economics.

I've tried to think of concepts specific to Economics that I find useful but this is mostly concepts in Economics which I learned at A-level and are less of a focus at university level. For example, understanding of your basic supply and demand models, monetary/fiscal policy, government intervention and taxation is definitely relevant to my job as these are key to understanding the economic environment in which businesses operate in, which in turns helps in analysing the performance of a business by providing you with an understanding of why certain business decisions are made and how external economic, political, geographical etc. factors could impact performance.

In terms of university level work, my particular area of interest in my course was behavioural economics, which borders on psychology at times, and so this is not very relevant to what I do now. However, I did do a few financial concepts modules which included some accounting concepts that are relevant to what I do now, such as business valuations, cost of capital, management reporting etc. Whilst I don't use these every day they have definitely come up from time to time and having this prior knowledge was helpful. Although, all of these concepts were also covered in studying for the CA qualification, but my prior knowledge from university was obviously useful for this.

Like I said above, the main skills I developed at university that I think are relevant to my job are now more general. For example, I had limited contact hours on my course and so most of my time was spent on independent study. This has been hugely helpful to completing my exams for the CA qualification as a significant portion of college is also self-study.

I also developed my ability to produce and deliver presentations as part of seminar classes but also for my dissertation. Whilst I don't really ever stand up in front of a room to deliver a presentation now, I do present analysis to clients and have attended pitches too, and being able to talk to a room about some work you've done is a key skill to have.

This point is kind of in relation to analytical skills which I know you asked me not to mention but it’s not strictly analytical in terms of statistics, mathematics etc. so I'll mention it anyway - experience using excel. I use this software every single day in my role at EY and I picked up most of what I know at university working on my dissertation. General digital literacy is important in any job nowadays, but especially for what I do, especially with the increased use of analytics in my role. I think being proficient at using computer software is a transferrable skill - if you're a whizz at excel for example you're likely good with other software and IT in general. This is transferrable as you'll likely pick up other programmes quite quickly as a result. I have had to learn PowerBI and Alteryx since joining and I know that my experience with excel, and other computing software made this far easier.

Hope this is somewhat helpful to you, apologies if it is not specific enough to Economics as you had in mind - and this is because for me personally I don't really think a lot of what I studied is relevant to what I do now due to its highly theoretical nature, although there may be others who had a different experience. Let me know if you have any further questions :)

03 January, 2024 11:40