Hello
@Abbie Whitlock @Andrei Radu
This may seem ridiculous, but I was wondering what's the best way to actually gain commercial awareness to the point I'm fluent in using terminology and understanding the implications of things. Right now, I'm extremely new and don't know where to begin. I was thinking of first understanding terminology like equity, bonds etc and then after 2 weeks, start to read articles and see if I can apply this to the articles, but I don't know how to go about it. What did you find was successful for you? I feel like there's so much and am worried in interviews I wouldn't be able to answer follow-up questions. Also, how do you actually remember what you've read - like keep a log of it, and also how can I keep track of a news story from start to finish? Sorry for lots of questions, just really don't know where to even start
Thank you
Hi
@flower1 I do not have a lot to add to the amazing response from
@Abbie Whitlock but I just wanted to mention that
a game-changing type of resource for me were commercial awareness podcasts. Firstly, because I found
they were an incredibly time-efficient way of working on my commercial awareness: while reading an article would require me to take away valuable working time off my day (which I much needed for researching firms, writing applications, or on my academics), I could listen to several hours of podcasts every day in the moments I could not use productively for another purpose (such as when commuting, doing laundry, cooking, or any other task that did not require significant concentration).
Secondly, I found that beyond gaining information and knowledge about the world of business,
podcasts were training my "inner commercial voice": by listening to hundreds of hours of recordings of experts talking about commercial topics, I started internalising a certain manner of thinking and speaking which is appropriate in a business context. This helped me immensely in being able to speak in a professional way about these topics in a manner that felt natural rather than performative; which is an aspect that I think can matter greatly in an interview context.
There are many great podcasts which can help you improve your knowledge and understanding of the world of business at different levels; I will list bellow a couple that were particularly useful for me:
- FT News Briefing: as Abbie mentioned, I think this is one of the best resources for a quick overview of the big news in business and politics in the last 24 hours; I would recommend this as a starting point, and would seek to listen to it every day.
- BBC Business News: A more comprehensive and in depth overview of business news in the last 24 hours, with more of a UK and Europe focus;
- Bloomberg Europe: A more comprehensive and in depth overview of business news, with a particular focus on impact to financial markets, dealmaking, and investment;
- Watson's Daily: an incredibly useful resource for learning how to critically analyse and debate a commercial topic; the participants here normally only tackle only two topics in a 40-50 minutes long podcast, but the analysis is a lot more detailed and involves a multitude of perspectives;
- Goldman Sachs Exchanges: a great periodic podcasts on a selected topic of importance to institutional investors; it goes into a lot of detail and can be jargon heavy, but can make you understand topics at a very impressive level of depth.
- The Lawyer Podcast: an amazing resource for learning more about the different market positions and strategies of big law firms;
