In conversation with... Dr Ken Lee, Associate Professorial Lecturer and MSc Programme Director for the Department of Accounting speaks to LSE undergraduate and DSL columnist Kara Jessup and shares his insights on what skills will help students about to enter corporate life ....
Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at LSE?
I’m an Associate Professorial Lecturer which means I basically do three things: I am programme director for the MSc Accounting & Finance and MSc Accounting, Organisations and Institutions programmes. Secondly, I teach equity valuation and financial analysts on a range of courses, and lastly I carry out research, mainly about people who work in the City, exploring theories from sociology to try and understand their behavior. I've been at the LSE for three years and worked in the City before that.
Could you tell me about your past work with the Digital Skills Lab?
When I was working in financial markets, I knew the importance of modeling for graduates starting their first job. When I arrived at LSE, I realized there was nothing on offer on that particular topic, so I thought it was an obvious gap. I approached the DSL with the idea of running a day of interactive modelling where I’m giving instructions that the students can interpret and input. We’ve run that every year since with at least 100 participants each session. We run two types: a full Saturday for master’s students, and a shorter version for undergraduates.
Do you have any plans of other types of projects or workshops that you'd like to start with the DSL?
A project that we’ve started, and will continue to develop, is on Python. We’ve put together a programme that starts with online self-study and, once a satisfactory level is achieved, we move on to a bespoke part where we look at financial and accounting uses of Python.
I’d like to develop that programme further. We were so happy we could do something during the pandemic, and now that we're all back we’ll let things settle and do it the same way this year. Next time we might make it a bit longer or give people a qualification at the end of it.
How do you use digital skills, both in the more corporate roles that you used to have and your academic roles now, and in what ways do they help you?
Some bits of software are so central to the job that they're unavoidable. When you start in the corporate world that I was exposed to, which was equity research, in the initial stages you're embedded in the detail of Excel, that's your number one port of call. Now, there is increasing demand to deal with more unstructured data using tools such as Python. Excel is just assumed knowledge now, but Python and coding in general are becoming more and more important for many roles.
Most students would have developed robust Microsoft Office skills over time. As I said, the new bit I'm seeing is a much bigger interest in coding than ever before. Even for people who are never going to be coders, I think it's becoming increasingly important. And particularly because it's a way of distinguishing yourself from those people who are more senior than you in the job. Five years ago, people were not talking about coding outside of the computer engineering world. Now what's happened is that even in mainstream finance and accounting jobs, there is an increased expectation that students will have had some exposure to coding. Students need to arrive with skills that the people hiring them don't have. And coding is the most obvious articulation of that.
I saw that you led a series of talks this summer regarding graduate recruitment and advice to upcoming graduates. Which hard or soft skills more generally would you deem the most important for students about to enter corporate life and why?
I have already alluded to the importance of digital skills, in particular learning coding and improving Excel for example. It is less about the specific package or coding language and more about the flexibility to draw on tools to solve problems.
In terms of soft skills, it's not going to be anything very exciting beyond what you might expect - the ability to communicate, both spoken and written. This may sound straightforward, but it is far from it. For example, we all need to develop and work on the ability to adjust our communication approach to the specifics of the situation we are in. The ability to adapt to different scenarios is critical but often very tough in the early part of your career.
On these summer talks I emphasized that people need to think deeply about what they would like to do at every stage of their careers. Even in the midst of an existing role you might assume this is what you want to do, you're exploring it, but it's early in your career. There is no need to commit at that stage. Often that changes dramatically through your career.
If you had one piece of advice to offer students while they're still at LSE, what would it be?
I would really encourage people to try and learn some things outside their comfort zone. For some that might be a new language, for some that will be coding or Excel. Digital skills are an obvious area to explore, and the DSL is there to help, which is fantastic for our students.