What is a finance? - some career guidance needed

Water Cooler Careers
#1

To all my fellow financiers, I have a question. What is a finance job? What is a career in finance?

I ask this question because I seem to have lost sight of my career goals and have become complacent in my current position. A little bit of a back-story, I got my bachelors degree back in 2011 as a finance major. Coming out of college I had a pretty difficult time finding employment. I had a couple interviews here and there with various banks and financial institutions but nothing materialized. The most promising interview I had was for a financial advisor position with Merrill Lynch where they asked me to come back multiple times but ultimately they passed on me because I didn’t have experience. I started asking myself how would I ever get experience if no one would hire me based on the fact that I didn’t have any… Catch 22.

I began to think of ways to improve my marketability and how to turn myself into a more desirable candidate to potential employers. I wanted to get my securities licenses by taking the various series’ exams. The series 7 and series 63 exams were the ones that stood out to me, but unfortunately in order to sit for any of those exams I needed to be already employed by a company that deals with investments. Bummer…

After more research, I decided that enrolling in the CFA program and taking the CFA Level I exam would be the best route for me to take. In the meantime I picked up a job at Enterprise just to have some form of income and to keep myself busy. Fast forward a year later I was still working at Enterprise and I had failed the Level I exam. I enrolled for the Level I exam again and six months later I finally passed Level I.

I ended up leaving Enterprise shortly after to become a bookkeeper at a business management firm in Los Angeles. I was pretty excited at the opportunity to live in a big city again, to work as a bookkeeper (somewhat finance/accounting related) and to work with people in the entertainment industry. I felt like I was finally on the right track with my career. Not long after my starting my new job I decided to sign up for the Level II exam and I to supplement my income I picked up a side job as an online finance tutor. I thought that tutoring finance would be a great way to keep my finance knowledge/skills sharp and keep me in a good study routine for the Level II exam.

A few months later I suffered a major knee injury requiring surgery and as a result I didn’t sit for my Level II exam because I didn’t put in the necessary study time. I knew without a doubt I wouldn’t pass. Later that year I ended up signing up for the Level II exam this past June but didn’t sit because again I didn’t study for it. No injuries/surgeries this time, just lack of motivation.

Completing the CFA won’t earn me a higher salary as a bookkeeper and it won’t make me any better at my job. It’s difficult to find the motivation to put so much time and effort into something where the outcome is so unclear.

Anyways, that’s the backstory; I hope I didn’t bore anyone. But it brings me to the current point in time where I’ve been considering leaving my job for the better part of this past year. I haven’t gained any new responsibilities for quite some time and I’ve learned everything that there is to know for the most part. I could benefit from more client interaction but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I think it’s time for me to move on. I tell myself I’d like to do something in finance/accounting. But the truth is I don’t really know what that could be. I don’t know what “finance” job is. I mean I really enjoy TVM problems, stocks, bonds, calculating WACC, CAPM, etc.… I like working with excel too for what that’s worth but truthfully I just don’t really know a finance job consists of. I feel that finance is such a broad subject and this “financial analyst” position everyone talks about and covets is the most well known “finance” position and yet it differs so much from company to company and from industry to industry.

If anyone has any insight or guidance or can be a source of inspiration that would be much appreciated. I’ve been feeling very blah about my career for sometime now. I feel that I’ve worked so hard in everything I’ve done so far and have had almost little to no reward. While I have other friends with no college education making over $100k I’m barely making $50k working two jobs.

Thanks in advance

#2

Sounds like you are close to being type cast as an accountant. Perhaps you should just go with that?

#3

Look and see how close you are to being CPA eligible. A job with a Big 4 firm, while not much fun, would allow you a path forward out of this rut you’re kind of in and give you a way up the salary ladder once you inevitably quit public accounting and work for another company.

Also, I’m curious where to find these $100k+ jobs with no college because obviously I missed something.

#4

You just have to stick to your guns and work extremely hard. Not sitting for the exam is your first mistake. Motivation is everything! Finance is motivation! You want finance you have to go get it and want it more than the other guy and go after it again and again and again as you will face rejection more than not. Find what motivates you and get after it!

#5

If you have a goal of pursuing the CFA Charter, you better be all in. As someone who just spent hundreds of hours studying for Level II I will tell you the same thing I tell everyone else: The majority of the material is not hard to understand and makes sense. It is the quantity of material that makes it so difficult. The CFAI wants candidates to have a full and complete understanding of the curriculum and this cannot be accomplished with a half a@$ed effort.

Additionally, I don’t believe you should be looking at the CFA Charter as some magic piece of paper that will instantly grant you huge paydays and promotions, to get that will require a significant amount of work and networking. What the Charter can do for you is open doors, provide a springboard to a different career, provide you with a huge amount of knowledge on a vast array of subject matters and ultimately show a potential employer a little glimpse into your work ethic.

The world of finance is vast and can encompass a person making $35k as an analyst at a small business in the middle of nowhere, to a CEO of an IB/Wirehouse making $35MM. The diversity makes it hard to define what your career will entail, that is up to you to decide.

#6

You majored in finance but don’t know what a job in finance is?

Sounds like a great school.

#7

Yes, as someone else said, the CFA is not a magical door opener to a 6 figure job. Not even remotely close. And it was never designed for that either.

for every 100 people that are unemployed and/or in some non-related job, that try to pass CFA exams in the hopes to jump into a core CFA job like equity research or asset managment, I’d say maybe 5 make it. And I’d bet 4 of those people are young kids who are early in the career, or had combined it with a good MBA.

#8

Itera, ouch, this just shattered me and I’m an opitmist. I’ve had a few interviews for research opportunities and have made it to the final rounds but haven’t landed one yet. It’s extremely difficult…so much so I was asked to write a research report and build a financial model the week before the exam. You seem like you know what’s up. Any advice on becoming that 1/100?

#9

Don’t let him scare you. Itera loves scaring people away from the profession. Keep pluggin.

#10

+1 keep on trucking, you miss 100% of the shots you dont take

#11