It’s one thing to say that CFA won’t help you break into a finance job. Or that it’s not all that important in investment banking. Or all that important in private equity. Or even overkill in some forms of wealth management, where many employers would prefer something like a CFP. Or a heavily quantitative job, where the CFA just isn’t mathematical enough. All of those are reasonable points of view.
It’s another thing to say “It’s a complete waste of time,” which implies that there is no value at all in learning anything in the curriculum. For any job. Under any condition. Ever. This is what your subject line says and what the drivel in your first post communicates to anyone with the patience to go through it.
Your subject line where you lost credibility with me, and with most of the posters on the forum.
Perhaps the CFA was completely useless to you, although you haven’t even gotten through Level 1 yet if I understood your post, so I’m not sure what you were expecting it to do, exactly. And what you are pursuing may not be the sort of thing that the CFA is useful for. In any case, it was never intended to be an entry-level credential, which seems to be what you are claiming it isn’t (welcome to the club of people who agree with you on that point).
The CFA is designed to help people who want to manage investment portfolios for individuals and institutions, and work with the techniques of valuation, portfolio construction, attribution, and some risk managment, along with a set of ethical and professional standards. If those things aren’t in your targeted job description now or at some point in the future, then don’t do it. (Though some of the principles are useful for personal portfolios, too).
But your complete ignorance about what are the sorts of things the CFA can help with, and your assumption that young people need to make sure they aren’t interested in it no matter who they are or what they want to do is just uninformed and batty.
And if you are having trouble in interviews, I would suggest trying to do some work on your personality. Do some anger management. Even here on this anonymous forum, pretty much everyone here can tell that you have a chip on your shoulder the size of Greenland + Spitzbergen. If anyone in an interview also perceived that, they would want to run from you as fast as they can, no matter how qualified you are or which letters you have after your name. People just ask you a question and you’re already assuming that they have the worst of intentions with the answer.
You need to chill out a bit, dude. The job market is tough for everyone these days, and no one needs more anger in their life, or their coworkers.
