Financial managers are indeed the bean counters, the people who keep track of where all the money is going. This is a sub-set of accountancy: in effect, doing the day by day work of tracking the money, the invoices, the income, the numbers work, which the accountants then come and check up on at the time of the annual audit. It is actually the route to power that the Great She Elephant, she who rules us all (pbuh) took to her position of supreme power in the organization. That is quite a common career progression, from financial management into general management: a modern company is best understood by the flows of money through it.

Training is almost always via a college degree. Even those who start as financial clerks will need to get a college degree if they are to progress: on the job experience is all very well but that college degree in business administration, finance or similar will be necessary. Many companies now insist upon a Master’s as well.

The job is a good illustration, in terms of our EQSQ personality tests, of the way in which the world of work has changed in recent years. 30 years ago this form of management was highly systematic: computers were large beasts that needed specialist programming, huge amounts of time would be spent in making sure that the data was correctly collated and then entered and then even more time spent trying to understand the results.

With the modern PC all of this can be done on a desktop and the most difficult part, running simulations to see “what if” is a trivial exercise on any spreadsheet package. This has meant that from being a highly male brain job it is now much more associated with those who can work in the large teams common to this sort of management: much more of a female brain type.

While there may have been this change it is still true that a strong head for numbers is required: so a balanced brain type opportunity.