It seems like a lot of you have really interesting jobs in financial services… whether it be equity research, fixed income, risk management, asset management, business valuation, etc…
I was wondering if your firm has any internship programs available, or if you are high enough in your firm that you can personally create a need for an intern or assistant?
For starters, I figure I can pay you or your firm $5000 for an open ended internship, where I can both learn and contribute to your daily activities and projects, etc, and you don’t have to pay me anything.
I have several years of financial services experience, an MBA, and of course, I am progressing towards the CFA designation.
If anything, you’ll be $5000 richer, and you don’t have to pay for a pre-mba or college kid from wherever…
Your offer sounds nice but it’s not that firms are too cheap to pay – it’s just that they need to know your quality of work experience before hiring you. If I’m a hiring manager, I’m most worried about training employees (i.e. will they require a lot of my time and bandwidth?) and about their reliability (i.e. can I trust the work that they do?). Ability to pay is one of the things I’m least concerned about, so I agree with bchadwick – there must be something in the way you’re representing your skills that is unfortunately preventing you from gaining traction.
The other thing is that you seem to lack focus. You’ve mentioned a bunch of capital markets/security analysis roles, but what do you REALLY want to do? I don’t know you from Adam so I’m not in a position to critique, but it’s possible that you’re making yourself too open to too many things so that when you actually get in front of a hiring manager, they don’t feel that confident in bringing you on board.
That’s just my conjecture but I think I have a reasonable basis for it.
Thanks guys. This is good advice. I guess that when I look at my own resume/background day after day, I get so inundated that I can’t really see what an ‘objective’ third party would see at first glance.
It needs more fixing up. All versions of it. Especially my last position.
Not to sound discouraging, but there must be a bad habit that you keep repeating if you haven’t been able to find any kind of work for a prolonged period of time. Actually, this should be encouraging because what I’m trying to say is that you ought to consult with an experienced mentor or someone that works in the fields you’re targeting to really figure out what’s going on. They can help you diagnose and fix things, potentially. There is clearly a problem with the process that seems to require some undoing, but since I don’t know you I can’t tell you what it is.
When you say, "I have several years of financial services experience" and have an MBA, it implicitly also makes one feel you have missed the bus of ‘internship’ - paid or unpaid or compensation paid by you. Internship, in general, is meant more for freshers and recent grads. Most comapnies / professionals go for interns as the interns are not only eager to learn and contribute but also can be treated as subordinates who can carry out varied type of tasks (that includes even Whitehouse-interns!). Once you are a reverse paying intern with your terms of working (e.g. open ended) anyone would hardly have the same feeling and appoint you. In fact your offer to pay $$ for such an offer is more discouraging than attractive. It will be more difficult to find such an offer than to get a job with your desired focus (one well-considered focus please, not any one out of many! ) may be at a lesser pay to start with but with potential of fast and assured growth once you have mastered what you wish to go for.
My condolences lock. Keep up the good hustle and preaching option troof on AF. Network hard, interview your best, and things will work out. Wish I was a grand dragon BSD that could just hire you and allow you semi free prop option trading range.