I passed the L1 and L2 exams of CFA program in my first attempt in Dec, 2012 and June, 2013 respectively; completed MBA - Finance froma Tier II college in India; have an Engineering degree in IT and have been working as a Business Analyst for an IT giant over the past one year (post MBA).
Although I am satisfied with my current job, I know that a job in Finance (especially capital markets/corporate Finance/PE) is the one in which I can really excel going forward.
In the past one year I have tried contacting/ applied to numerous companies for entry level jobs in Finance but haven’t received a chance for a single interview!!. Day by day my frustration level is getting worse due to my inability to receive a chance for a single job interview and I have really started doubting if I will ever be able to work in Financial Services industry even if I clear Level 3 next June.
I know very well that getting an entry level job as an equity research analyst/credit analyst means having to work at significantly lower salary in India, but even after showing willingness to work at 30-40% below my current pay hasn’t earned me an interview opportunity.
I would like to get suggestions from those of you who have gone through/are in a similar situation as mine.
Sometimes employers don’t see you willing to work for less money as “Oh I can pay him less”, they see it as “He doesn’t value himself so he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about to begin with” and given you have no experience in that field they likely don’t want to take that chance. Everybody and their mom says they will work for free for somebody nowadays to get “experience”, this doesn’t work, employers have a huge pool of candidates to choose from.
Business Analyst is a cool gig, you could work your way to Project Manager or maybe go a developer route and combine your CFA knowledge with your IT skills to develop financial software.
There is no need to get frustrated, try to get into business analysis related to Derivatives trading platforms etc in your company. Calypso is a Derivative trading platform which you could try to get into. As far as I know most of the major IT services companies have projects on this. It would be a mix of Operations + Development and you can really add value here. You could add value as a process owner as well in some of these areas!
Depending on your work experience it might not be a good idea to shift entirely to Financial services you know! The more your IT experience, the lesser chance you would get those roles!