Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What makes Training the Street the best learning services firm?
Ask around – our reputation speaks for itself. We are in high demand because we provide the best learning experience for the finance professional. Our client retention rate is astronomical. We are constantly improving our course content and teaching strategies. Glance at our participant testimonials, or read The Message from the Founder, and you'll get a good sense of why we're number-one.
Q: Don't Wall Street investment banks have excellent in-house training programs for people coming in? What's the purpose or value of outsourcing this function to you? What makes your instructors especially well-qualified?
It's no secret that most investment bankers like to close deals. Business school professors, on the other hand, are often excellent teachers, but they lack the practical, hands-on emphasis bankers have. Training The Street (TTS) combines these two skill sets. We know banking. But we're also born teachers. We've had years of experience doing both.
Q: Why is the work TTS does so beneficial to the Street?
Financial modeling and valuation are the essential building blocks of Wall Street finance. You can get the basics of this in business school, but that's largely theory. The entire key to modeling and valuation is to know how to apply what you've learned in a real-world situation. There are simply too many tools, strategies, and variables for you to know what to use in a given transaction. And working on transactions is how you learn financial modeling and corporate valuation. Ask any finance professional: These technical skills come from experienced based learning. That's where we come in. Through fun yet intensive structured courses, we give you an accelerated feel for deal flow that would otherwise take you months, if not years, to acquire, allowing participants in TTS courses to better hit the ground running when they start at their desk.
Q: How long has TTS been around? Who are your primary clients?
TTS was founded in 1999 and has grown explosively ever since. Our corporate clients are mainly investment banks, but we have also led sessions for finance departments and corporate development teams at non-bank firms. Currently, we lead live training programs at more than 50 corporate clients, including the ten largest Wall Street banks, and at more than 45 business schools and undergraduate colleges. In fact, TTS had nearly 18,000 participants in live classes in 2007!
Q: You claim to be the market leader of these training services, yet some of your competitors claim they have an expansive client list, or that they have the same clients as TTS. What should I believe?
Unlike some other firms, we use a very conservative approach to counting and listing our clients. This is part of our philosophy of "Underpromising and Overdelivering." Some competitors have no topflight corporate clients yet they include a firm in their client list after making just cursory e-learning contact with it. By contrast, TTS lists clients only upon providing live instruction and training. Our client list doesn't include companies whose employees merely took a self-study course or attended a TTS class while at school. When comparing our services to others', ask:
- Was live training offered in the last 12 months, and where?
- What services did they provide during these live events?
- Who were the participants? Interns, full-time analysts, and full-time associates or just on-line participants?
- Can the firm make references from these live events available?
If you would like a deep and broad list of our corporate client references, just ask us. We'll be glad to provide one. Please click here to view our academic client list.
Q: What differentiates TTS from other providers of financial services training?
We are the market leader in financial modeling and valuation services. We are also the preferred provider of these services at our clients, where we conduct training for interns and full time personnel from the analyst to associate level. At the university level, we have been teaching financial modeling and valuation workshops since 1999. The success of our university training is complemented by the fact that three of our instructors are current Adjunct Professors.
Q: Why can't I just learn financial modeling through an online course? Why take a course live?
Self-study courses have the advantage of convenience, but that's about it. They fall short in the critical areas of guided instruction and real-time feedback, as well as the focus and motivation you get when you're interacting with live expert instructors in a multimedia group setting. Online training complements live instruction well, but substitutes poorly for it.
But you don't have to choose! TTS has developed an e-training partnership with Intuition for those who can't take a live course. These e-training modules provide a detailed overview of major valuation methodologies. This can be very helpful in boosting your confidence if you were, for example, going to an interview for a finance career position. Click here for more info.
Q: I'd like invite TTS to lead instruction at our company/university. How do I do this?
Easy! First, check to make sure that we don't already offer training at your company or university. Check with your training and human resources departments if employed at a company or services such as the finance club, career center or student services if you are a student. If we don't, email us at . Propose a set of dates and what you'd like us to help you with. A TTS representative will contact you to discuss training options.
Q: My company/university doesn't plan to offer TTS courses any time soon. Or, I missed the TTS course they recently offered. Are TTS's courses open to the public at large?
Yes. In Fall 2006, TTS launched its first open enrollment series of courses. Currently, we have a variety of courses that are offered in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. We realize that, often, new hires don't have a chance to attend recently held training. Our open enrollment courses are aimed at them, as well as at lateral hires looking to build their finance skill set and finance professionals looking for a refresher. Click here for more info.
