Just wondering if people consider the local CFA society membership to be worth the fee? Specifically, I’m interested to hear if anyone has ever benefited from a job opportunity perspective i.e. whether the Job Board has any exclusive postings that you wouldn’t find anywhere else? The CFA society of the UK for example has a candidate membership for £100 per year. From the website it says benefits include: Stay ahead Make more informed decisions by attending events featuring speakers such as James Montier and Jim O’Neill Further your professional development by attending more than 20 career events Browse the CFA UK Job Board where employers actively target CFA candidates Consult a wealth of online resources including webcasts, podcasts and publications Receive Professional Investor, our quarterly magazine, to get a thorough understanding of current issues affecting the profession Get connected Join an influential network of over 9,300 UK investment professionals Meet other members at member-only drink receptions and dinners in London, Scotland and the Channel Islands Participate in special interest groups on value investing, private equity, energy, foreign exchange, performance & risk management, insurance and emerging markets Find the best recruiters through our online directory Be supported – benefits specifically for CFA candidates Study intensively during CFA Surgeries. Led by expert CFA trainers, these interactive member-only study sessions break down complex areas of the curriculum Learn about Financial Reporting and Analysis and study management with leading CFA experts at a CFA Briefing Join a CFA UK Study group to compare notes with fellow CFA candidates and motivate each other while studying Receive generous discounts on Stalla’s study materials distance learning Get discounted training with selected independent CFA training providers Win a scholarship. We offer 18 scholarships annually to help cover candidates’ registration fees, examination costs and the expense of study materials -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
from my experience, the CFA website job board is pretty good. I got significant higher than avg call back rate from there than any other job listing website
iteracom Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > from my experience, the CFA website job board is > pretty good. I got significant higher than avg > call back rate from there than any other job > listing website I totally agree with this. For the most part, the listings are high-quality vs. those annoying sites that aggregate everything with no filter. I actually landed my current position through the site even before earning my charter (I had passed L2 at the time). At the very least, joining the local society gives you more inside access to a pretty substantial network of like-minded folks.
Agree with iteracom above. Some societies allow public access to their job board while others are private. You’ll also get email notifications as jobs are posted. Not sure how feasible it is for you to actually attend any luncheons/events, but I would highly recommend doing so. The same group of members/charterholders attend on a frequent basis. You’ll be able to expand your network to not only people with the same experience, but also senior pms, execs, etc. This industry is still about who you know and having connections in the CFA world can only help in markets like these.
where are you guys located. anyone in new york? i could be wrong, but i thought i read here that NYSSA just uses efinancialcareer?
Depends on which local society you belong to. The Boston society is excellent for local job postings, many of which are not posted anywhere else; it’s how I got my current job. Looks like you are in the UK though, so I can’t really comment on local societies over there.
I landed my job through the local CFA society. A contact I met at a local event forwarded my resume on to my current employer. By the way, what are “CFA Surgeries”?
If you’re in New York, NYSSA is a really good local society. They have reasonable professional development courses, topical conferences, etc., and it’s reasonably good for networking. You also have access to I’d imagine that the Boston society is good, and possibly the San Francisco one. I’ve found that the NYSSA jobs site tends to go to efinancialcareers, but it isn’t exactly the same as efinancialcarrers, because the job postings are more geared toward CFA type people, so there is some filtering and selecting that goes on before. I wouldn’t say that NYSSA’s dues are justified by that alone, but there is some added value in the filtering process that they do.
for the UK society, all good if you are in London. All events ans surgeries happen in London. there could be 2 or 3 in Edinburgh. All job openings posted is London based. I live 250 miles away from London. for me last years membership didnt help much. you get access to view certain videos. So all good only if you are in easy reach to canary wharf.
bchadwick - i just joined nyssa and id be curious as to more of your thoughts on leveraging the resources they provide. would you be willing to go into a bit more detail about how youve utilized nyssa?
I don’t go so much anymore, but when I was starting out, it was very helpful for networking. Unfortunately, the people with the busiest jobs are typically not going to NYSSA events, and the people who are looking for jobs are, so there’s a high density of people looking, but that’s not really a terrible thing, because many of them eventually find jobs and then you have a network in place. And particularly at the topical events (emerging markets, industry conferences, etc.) most people are working. I also used some of their professional development courses early on. Some were good, others meh, but I generally found them useful. They’ve raised their prices for events, which I don’t like. In compensation, the food is better, but I’d rather give up the food and have cheaper events. There are also bloomberg terminals and computers (and I believe capitalIQ as well) so that you can have access to that stuff if you’re unemployed and need it. NYSSA isn’t the be-all and end-all, but it definitely helped when I was starting out.