you know more or less how much you can expect to  make say fresh out of college it's fine if you  

just give us a range sure um did you just apply to  this job online or did you have like an internal  

contact did you network stuff like that yeah so i  what's up everyone it's kenji here and today i'm  

joined by michael a financial analyst at tesla in  san francisco and he's been kind enough to share  

a few of his insights on what the role is like so  firstly we'll look at more of the recruiting side  

so how he got the job the interview process  and all that stuff and then secondly we'll  

look into more of the day-to-day and what he  usually does in the role so let's get into it  

so michael just starting off with the basics  to give the audience a bit of background  

can you tell us a bit about where you  studied was this your first job and so on  

yeah so i studied at cornell university um  graduated in the middle of 2021 um and then  

shortly after i worked at tesla as a financial  analyst um during school i did an internship with  

cushman in wakefield during the summer and then  actually extended it during a gap semester okay  

during the covey times to work there as well and  just going over the more of the the recruiting  

side of things did you just apply to this job  online or did you have like an internal contact  

did you network stuff like that yeah so i did a  little bit of both um there was a posting online  

and i also did some some research via linkedin  and i found someone who was a high school alumni  

okay the company and then i also did more of a  cold reach out to someone i didn't quite know  

who was more who was working on a team that i was  interested in um so i did sort of combination of  

both and reaching out to those two people to sort  of get my foot in the door and learn more about  

the role the company et cetera so when you say  you reached out was this like you just send them  

an email randomly or try to connect a few things  with them yeah so um with the high school alumni  

that one was a bit easier yeah we could start  with some commonality and then just sort of work  

our way from there um and then for the person that  i didn't quite know it was a more formal reach out  

but still just a cold message over linkedin saying  hey you know i'd like to learn more um could we  

perhaps get on the phone okay so they were kind  enough to reply and that kind of worked for you  

basically yeah yeah has that been the case in the  past or for other internships and things like that  

does it usually work when it comes to cold  emailing and networking like that yeah so i  

would say you know you won't get a response from  from everybody because there's some people who are  

quite busy but you'd be surprised by the people  who do respond to you and you know if you reach  

out to enough people um and you keep going at  it you will get some responses yeah fair enough  

that's great to hear i mean i've emphasized this  in the in some other of my videos so yeah make  

sure you give it a try especially when it comes  to cold emailing at the end of the day it doesn't  

really cost you anything right it's just free to  do and well maybe they don't reply but that's it  

thinking back to my interview obviously during  covet times it was a little bit different um but  

it started with one or two interviews that were  more behavioral you know they asked questions like  

um you know what are your strengths and  weaknesses you know tell me about your resume  

why are you interested in the job etc um then  shortly after that they actually did a 30-minute  

excel test okay um so that was you know somewhat  intense but but more straight to the point in  

testing to see if you can use excel you know  understand some financial accounting concepts  

um then after that there was maybe one more  behavioral interview followed by a final round  

interview which is maybe four or five people back  to back on 30-minute interviews um where it was  

you know somewhat intense where i would say maybe  three or four of those interviews where maybe  

excel case study tests that you had to sort of  share your screen and sort of do the exercise with  

them and just sort of come up with some insights  on a little case study here and there yeah  

and speaking of excel stuff we actually have one  big announcement which is that we've released our  

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we've designed this course to be as practical  as possible based on our real experiences at  

companies like tesla and amazon so aside from the  typical lessons on formatting formulas and charts  

we have case studies that replicate the type of  work you might be assigned in your day-to-day  

ranging from financial modeling to cleaning a  data set and presenting some visual insights  

so if you're interested in checking it out we'll  be running big discounts for the first week since  

this video is released so make sure you check the  link in the description below before it expires  

so in your case you got this job basically fresh  out of college but was that the case with most  

other analysts or did they have previous  experience either at a bank a consultancy  

or a similar type of company yeah so it's kind  of hard to say but for the small team that that  

i worked on um i was pretty much the only analyst  that came fresh out of college okay most of the  

other senior analysts had you know some experience  in banking or some consultancy one might have had  

like internship experience at tesla and then  converted that into a full-time role and then  

most of you know the upper positions and the  associates and managers had experience elsewhere  

as well and when it comes to the other candidates  so the people that also interviewed with you or  

they're mainly like ivy league types or were they  really from all over when it comes to education  

yeah so that would be also hard to say because i  interviewed during covet period yeah so i didn't  

really get to meet many of the other candidates  but i'd say based on the resumes of most people  

there i think there's a good mix actually you  know there's there's some representation of you  

know ivy leagues or some elite schools and then  there's some who come from you know state schools  

or very very um standard schools as well and you  can't really tell the difference actually and they  

all really perform at that high level that's  that's great to hear so michael moving on to  

the actual role for people that might not really  know what does a financial analyst do right so the  

the label financial analyst is quite vague but i'd  say yeah the financial analyst tasks can be quite  

role specific in terms of my experience i found  myself updating maintaining and revamping a lot  

of forecast models in addition to that you might  find yourself approving a lot of purchase requests  

for new developments relocations expansions things  like that and you find also quite a bit of side  

projects ad hoc analysis anything really just to  support the business um and things along those  

lines makes sense and as for the company's culture  like from the outside it seems like it's very  

hyped up and it seems like quite an intense place  what's it like from the inside view yes yeah so it  

is pretty intense you know very high pace um and a  lot of really lean teams right um you're not gonna  

have you know a ton of people on a team covering  a small amount of work um you know you're going to  

have you know quite a lot of responsibility and  even as a as a fresh graduate you know quite a  

lot of responsibility and quite a bit of impact um  on the company even from you know just financial  

models to specific purchase requests every little  thing counts um and so yeah there's a lot of work  

to be done but it's definitely a great opportunity  and great exposure to a business in a really you  

know fast growing field makes sense makes sense  and can you give us a bit of context as in how  

many actual hours you might be working in a day or  in a week yeah so i would say that is also pretty  

team specific pretty role specific right um but  from my experience i'd say you know you'd wake up  

maybe eight closer to nine sometimes a little bit  earlier if there's a big meeting that needs to be  

put on the schedule for a lot of people  then you work your way through the day  

maybe get close to dinner finish dinner and  then finish up a few tasks after dinner and  

sort of end it there so maybe around what 12 hours  maybe even 14. um you could get some longer days  

and then you can have some shorter days as well  kind of depending on you know how things go you  

know if you have an important deadline on  certain week um or maybe you know you might  

find yourself catching up on um a few things  here and there but yeah maybe something along  

those lines how about how about weekends were they  usually protected you would be working so i'd say  

for weekends um definitely a lot lighter you know  you might find yourself doing a few tasks here and  

there here and there to to catch up or to you  know just start on a few things a little early  

to give yourself a little bit of a buffer for  the following week following week but uh yeah i'd  

say weekends it's pretty pretty light yeah if it  makes sense make sense and i know you might not be  

able to answer this question but i feel like the  audience really wants to know about this one but  

you know more or less how much you can expect  to make say fresh out of college it's fine if  

you just give us a range sure um i think with  the base pay and the equity compensation okay  

um you're definitely going to clear the 100k  mark okay now with equity that's kind of  

um some compensation that has to vest and you  know the value of that compensation kind of  

changes over time depending on how the stock price  sort of moves how many series yeah something like  

that maybe um but yeah so now that the stock price  you know has moved up you know quite a bit since  

um last year and the year before you know trying  to measure up that type of compensation is kind of  

in a gray area i guess you could say it makes  sense makes sense and for people that are actually  

in this type of a role today what kind of exit  opportunities are they looking at or they really  

try to stay there for the long run um so i'd  say that there's probably a mix um you would  

have you know quite a few people you know trying  to build a long long-term career at the company  

you know work their way up to associate  managers directors and so on and so forth um  

and you really go down that cfo track i guess  you could say um and then there's there's some  

who leave um there's some who start their own  thing there's some who move on to investments  

maybe an investment firm asset management type  firm um kind of wherever i think that they can  

apply their skills that they've learned there and  and go forward yeah makes sense makes sense and  

so for people that are maybe either current  students or working professionals aspiring  

to break into this kind of a role well what  advice would you give them sure yeah um i think  

technical skills are a good way to go about it um  to make yourself you know a marketable candidate  

right um i'd say excel is definitely a must that's  kind of the reason why we made this course yeah um  

and then you know after that i think some  nice bonuses are sql you know some data  

management tools power bi maybe a little bit  of python if you really want to go the extra  

mile yeah and then on top of that maybe some  financial accounting courses finance courses  

things of that nature and for people that are  currently in university are there any courses that  

you would recommend that they take maybe you took  in the past that you felt were really valuable  

yeah so i would say um a lot of the excel oriented  courses right um at cornell we had some financial  

modeling courses some investment modeling courses  things of you know on that sort of scale that was  

really helpful um in addition to that you know  financial accounting courses yeah um general  

investment courses are really nice and then um  to go back to so more of the the technical skills  

i'd say um something like python or maybe like  a small statistics class would be very helpful  

as well and did you do you find yourself often  using powerpoint as well is that something that  

you use on your day to day or not really yeah  i'd say powerpoint is definitely a solid tool  

um to have on your tool belt just because when  you communicate with upper management or bigger  

parties um internally that's normally the way  you sort of go about it yeah makes sense those  

are questions that i had prepared for michael feel  free to drop some in the comments if you have any  

questions specifically for him he'll be looking  out for that as well feel free to check out some  

of these videos over here on excel for finance  if you want to level up your excel skills or  

this other free video on discounted cash flows if  you're interested big thanks to michael for making  

this happen hit that like hit that subscribe if  you enjoyed it and i'll catch you in the next one