alumni
Eye on Alumni: Jordi Gutiérrez '18
“I applied for the Master’s thinking about aiming for a job at the European Central Bank. My idea actually worked out very early during the Master's, and I managed to land a job there.”
Jordi Gutiérrez '18 (Economics) is a Risk Analyst at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). In this Eye on Alumni interview he shares his expectations before the Master’s and his career path afterwards.
How was your experience studying at the Barcelona School of Economics?
I have very good memories of BSE. The Economics Master's Program was actually quite tough, but, overall, I have good memories and I still hang out with plenty of my friends from that time. I remember basically being all the time with other students or studying at the library. I think I never have studied as hard as when I was doing the Master’s at BSE.
When I applied for the Master’s, I was already thinking about my possible future jobs. Basically, I was thinking about aiming for the European Central Bank (ECB), as I had found in the BSE Careers page that many BSE alumni had joined the ECB. My idea worked out very early during the Master's, and I actually managed to land a job there. I was also expecting a quite international community at BSE, which it still is nowadays.
Before the Master's, you worked for a year and a half at Focus Economics. Why did you decide to leave that job and study a master’s?
After completing my Bachelor’s degree in Economics, my idea was to work for a year before the Master’s. When I joined Focus Economics, I already had in mind that at some point I wanted to continue my studies. When I was there, it was a bit difficult to take the decision to leave, because actually I was happy and I could have stayed.
But, in the end, I wanted to keep moving and work abroad. After one year, I decided that I wanted to go for the master's and try something new. I think my experience at Focus Economics helped me later in working with data in the Master’s, but also later on at the ECB.
Your objective was working at the European Central Bank after the Master's, which you did. How was your job there?
First, I can tell you that here one meets a lot of people who have studied at the Barcelona School of Economics. Before coming, there were already several people from BSE master’s programs that had come here. We used to have “BSE lunches” with people from previous cohorts, who were already working at the European Central Bank.
As for the job, my daily tasks were mainly of data analysis. We regularly had tasks in which the National Central Bank sent data to the European Central Bank, then we analyzed it, we disseminated it, we wrote press releases, etc. This was a monthly/quarterly routine and between these productions, we worked on different projects. For example, I did some text mining and also worked on some projects with time series, where the experience from the Master’s econometric courses actually helped me a lot.
Which advice would you give to new BSE students?
I would tell them to try to meet new people. Don't stay in the comfort zone of the group of people that maybe you know already from your Bachelor’s. Interact with people that you meet during the first days of the Master’s. Try to do projects with other people. Try to see different topics.
A good way to do this could be by doing courses from other master’s programs, which can give you some new ideas about fields that you might be interested in. In summary, I would say: try new things and see what you like the most, and which projects you enjoy developing with whom.
After almost 3 years working at the European Central Bank, you have just moved to the European Securities and Markets Authority. Could you explain your motivation for this new job position?
After almost three years in the same team at the ECB, I felt like it was a good time to move, mainly to face different challenges, and learn new techniques and tools. While there are opportunities for mobility within the ECB, the ESMA is a quite recent European authority that deals with big amounts of data.
I started studying Economics following the financial crisis, so I was excited about joining the Risk Analysis Division of a European authority built in those years, aiming at keeping the stability of the financial system. My tasks are very similar to the ones of a data analyst: working on financial data from the point of view of risk analysis. It mostly involves programming to get to understand the data and build dashboards to efficiently communicate this information.