The top universities for technologists wanting to work on Wall Street (and the increasing demands placed on graduate recruits)

Financial services firms might be increasingly losing out on the best and brightest new technology talent to new media and tech start-up companies, but they’re still targeting the same elite band of schools.

This is US-focused, but interesting nonetheless – Wall Street & Technology polled executives working in capital markets functions on their favoured universities to recruit IT talent from. The list is doubly interesting because of its candour - most recruiters in financial services profess a lack of preference to any particular schools or degrees when hiring graduates.

In no particular order, here are the five preferred schools:

Carnegie Mellon University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Stanford University

Georgia Institute of Technology

(Brown University, Rice University, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University were also highlighted)

In the UK, it’s increasingly common for universities to tap into banks’ desire to have new recruits equipped with both technical and financial services know-how.

For example, UCL’s MSc in Financial Computing is supported by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, Warwick Business School’s MSc in Finance & IT was coined by an ex-MD at BlackRock, Mark Taylor and the likes of Keele University and Essex University both offer post-graduate degrees in financial computing.

Obviously, taking one of these courses will equip any potential recruits with the necessary technical skills – Java, .Net and C++ are still the most commonly sought after by financial services firms. However, any potential IT recruits need to come armed with softer qualities.

Respondents to WS&T spoke of “communication skills”, “influence management” and even the ability to be “humble”.

As Ian Scott, IT manager, fixed income at BNP Paribas told us: “A successful IT professional will be self-motivated, organised and thorough, possessing strong analytical and logical skills. They will want to learn and be able to apply experiences to their work. They will be innovative but cost-aware, autonomous but collaborative: somebody that we can easily work alongside.”

In other words, despite the gravitation of tech talent away from the financial sector, banks still expect a lot from their potential recruits.