Career Advice Please? Seeking investment analyst entry insight/ideas

I have a finance degree, no additional certifications. I’m registered for level 1 cfa. I have no professional corporate experience. I’ve worked labor at Ford for 5 years. I’ve traded stocks and been a tutor for college finance students. I’m 30. I badly want a job as an investment analyst. Entry level. I have no established social network but I do have LinkedIn and f.b. I have an interview today for a “loan specialist” position for a national mortgage company. I’m submitting resumes daily and this is my first positive reply. How do I get my foot in the door to set me down the investment analyst career path? I’m ready to do anything. Any amount of work. Any tests. Any cold emails. This is my dream and more importantly it’s my passion and I care more than anything about making others’ money. Please help. Input is valued.

worked labor at Ford? you were on the factory production floor? if this is a serious post, your odds are really poor.

you are past the age to “break into” the highly desired jobs, your past finance degree won’t matter much anymore, and registered for CFA L1 means you can fill out an online forum and have $700 (which means squat). fresh finance grads will be heavily preferred before you, and there are tons of people who already have some finance also ahead of you

loan specialist isn’t an investment position, it’s likely a processing job like signing up people for credit card applications

if you really want to do this, a top MBA program is likely your only real option

Good insight.

The loan job is to establish contact with mortgage holders who are less than sixty days past due on their payment and collect or have them fill out paperwork which I forward to be processed that can allow them government mandated refinancing options based on income eligibility.

If I want to be in the investment analyst arena, and I’m the type of guy who is interested in all the content that the CFA covers (meaning I can comprehend it and none of it is foreign), what direction should I be aiming? Where should I be applying now?

The MBA sounds doable. I have to find a great online program…

I was on the shop floor at Ford, but honestly I got complacent. I buy textbooks wholesale and resell them on Amazon during my 20’s. I made 20 to 45k per year from that alone. I have invested in my etrade account for years and experimented with different trading strategies, performed tech analysis, and composed spreadsheets with lots of nested functions; along with doing a lot of qualitative research on macroeconomic current events and logging the findings into an excel database to later correlate the findings with price movements.

I appreciate your feedback.

No dude. No online programs.

Ok. You gave me a lot to think about guys. Thank you.

Is taking the CFA level one really that bad of an idea?

I have to disagree, and the price to take it is outweighed by the credential I believe it provides.

I have a wealth management job interview this Friday.

At this point I’m gonna look into the best in class MBA programs in the western new York area, plan to continue to work nights at ford, plan to take level one cfa, and do investment research and act on my own account. I’ll also look into investment analyst positions, continue to network, and only accept a finance job if it’s in the arena with investment management, or if it will pay well and allow me to earn my MBA in class.

If you have any additional suggestions I’m all ears. Thanks again.

Taking L1 is not a bad idea, I don’t think itera was saying that. Using “L1 candidate” on your resume doesn’t really mean much because as stated, all you’ve done is sign up. Move forward with the exam but just remember it guarantees nothing. There are a lot of people with actual financial services experience in their backgrounds that are deep into the program or have the charter and still find it difficult to land jobs.

Seems like you’re a motivated person and have some interesting things to talk about. That would lend me to think building up that network beyond social media would be a great place to start. Your biggest hurdle will be getting your resume passed through to the point of an interview. Doing that cold with no reference(s) and with no finance experience will be near impossible.

Good luck on the exam!