Course Project: Interview a Financial Manager

HAME509: Risk & Return: How to Identify, Measure,

and Incorporate Into Capital Budgeting Decisions

The Hotel School, Cornell University

Course Project: “Interview a Financial Manager”

Now you are going to interview a financial professional within your firm to identify the relevance between the tools and calculations you have mastered here, and the ongoing operations of your organization.

Instructions:

Identify a finance professional within your organization who is in a position to answer your questions and arrange a brief (15-minute) interview.
Ask the finance professional to answer the following questions. Ask for as much detail as you need to round out your full understanding of how the tools and concepts of risk and return are used within your organization to informcapital budgeting decisions.
Record the person’s answers to your questions in this document.
Save your work and submit it according to the instructions in the course.

Alternative: Completing this interview will be a valuable way to round out your understanding of theoretical course concepts and your own organization. If you cannot complete this interview because you work for a small organization without a dedicated finance team, or you are currently unemployed, you can complete this assignment doing independent online research. Use the italicized alternative instructions.

Indicate here which form your complete project has taken:

☐ I have interviewed a finance professional within my organization,

☐ I have completed the alternative assignment via independent research.

Interview Questions
1. In my course, “Risk and Return: How to Identify, Measure, and Incorporate Into Capital Budgeting Decisions,” we examined risk in terms of corporate accounting and capital budgeting. What are some of the risk factors that our firm can control? How do we try to manage those?
*Alternative: What are some of the risk factors that any firm can control? / Answer:
2. What are some of the risk factors that our firm cannot control?
*Alternative: What are some of the risk factors that any firm cannot control? / Answer:
3. In our course, we examined the WACC. Do we currently use the WACC to inform decisions about capital expenditures? In what ways is it helpful?
*Alternative: How do firms typically use the WACC? / Answer:
4. In the course I’m taking, we’ve looked at CAPM. How do you use CAPM? How does it help?
*Alternative: How do firms typically use CAPM? / Answer:
5. Our course content discussed systematic risk. We compared the systematic risk in firms such as an airline company versus a candy company. Can you describe in general terms the systematic risk in our firm?
*Alternative: Choose a firm or favorite company that you often do business with
and briefly describe your intuitive understanding of its systematic risk. / Answer:
6. I’d like to find ways to use the risk and return concepts that I’ve been learning about to become a better operational manager. What recommendations do you have for what I could be doing better, or what I could start to do for the first time?
*Alternative: Briefly describe the ways that you see the course content being helpful to you as you develop a greater understanding of how capital budgeting decisions are made. / Answer:

Save your work and submit it according to the instructions in the course.