They Don't Teach How To Deal With This In School

Water Cooler Careers
#1

So this is partially a rant and partially a request for advice. I’m dealing with a career quandary right now and not sure how to solve my issue. As I’ve posted before, I’m currently the Equity Research Compliance Officer for a B/D, but I’m trying to move over to write technical research for my firm. I am a CMT charterholder, have the FINRA licenses to write research reports, and am studying for the CFA Level I to hopefully further build my credibility. Within the past year, I’ve also developed a good relationship with our Chief Market Strategist (who is about as big of a BSD as anyone at my firm and regularly appears on CNBC/Fox Business News and his market calls often appear on the front page of Yahoo Finance). When he cannot write his daily commentary, I have actually been filling in and have written about 10 reports that go to his subscription list (about 6,000 readers between our network of retail financial advisors and institutional clients). I’ve received plenty of positive feedback and would like to propose to the Director of Research that they make me a full-time technical analyst.

However, the issue comes with firm politics. We do have a small group in another office (I’m at the home office) that produces some technical commentary and the Director of Research has said in the past that it’s ok if I do these periodic strategy pieces, but that the official technical analysis should come out of this other office. Complicating things further is that the Chief Market Strategist that I work with and the head of this other technical analyis group do not get along, so I believe it would be hard to go to the head of this other group and ask for a job and they don’t seem to be looking for help anyway. If I attempted this, I’d likely hurt my relationship with the Chief Market Strategist too which is something I want to avoid.

So right now I am stuck in Compliance and passing over Compliance promotions because my current position is very visible to all of the Research parties involved as I work with all of them on Compliance matters. I feel like I need to take some action because it’s not very likely that they’re just going to offer me a position if I don’t ask for it. But I don’t know if I should go straight to the Director of Research, who would ultimately make the decision, wait it out with the Chief Market Strategist even though there really isn’t a position opportunity there, or try to build a better relationship with the head of the technical analysis group with the hopes that he’d offer me a job. Ideally, they would create a position for me working with the Chief Market Strategist, but I’m not sure how I could monetize that enough to pitch it to the DOR.

Any suggestions?

#2

“the issue comes with firm politics”

Issue = Politics

There’s your answer. Which ‘party’ is in charge from the top and how quickly could you establish a political relationship if you must take the opposing side?

#3

You are tight with the Chief Market Strategist. How tight are you with the DOR again? I would ask if this guy has an hour so that you could buy him lunch as you want to “pick his brain” or whatever. Then start asking him what his recommendation is for someone looking to transition into a research role from compliance.

Further, it wasn’t clear to me if you asked the Chief Market Strategist about his opinion? If not, I would do the same with him – pull him aside, candidly say that you have some things you’d like to ask his recommendation on, do that thing where you say “I know this may be a surprise, but this is what I’ve been thinking about my career, I look to you as someone to model myself after here and I would be grateful for your advice, I’m not sure about how to move forward and don’t want to upset other compliance people, etc., etc.” If the CMS isn’t a d**k then he will understand and keep it on the DL.

Myself, I would not be afraid to be shameless about your ambitions with everyone in your firm – but it seems that if you are already passing over compliance promotions, these guys would be clueless if they haven’t figured something out about your intentions already.

Good luck.