Long story short and I’ll try to tell it without tooting my own horn too much:
3 months ago I applied for a position in an asset management firm and was hired few weeks later. After getting to know my co-workers and the people present at the interviews, I was basically told that I was hired because:
-
I did well in the “personality type” questions (whatever that means)
-
I did really well in the finance related questions/My candidacy in the CFA program.
This doesn’t really surprise me since there would have been no way in hell I could have answered correctly to the interview questions without having studied for past 2-3 years for CFA. Now after working there for 3 months, I have experienced first hand that CFA curriculum really does give you a pretty solid base to build on. Even though I have less industry experience than most of my co-workers, there has been times where I have demonstrated a higher level of understanding on certain topics and this has been recognized by my superiors.
I have tried to think this over and over and the only thing I can attribute this success to is the decision to start studying for CFA in the spring of 2016. Without it, I would have never been hired. And even if I would have been miraculously hired, I would have never survived more than few weeks as my finance knowledge would not have been sufficient.
I often hear discussions on whether CFA is worth the effort and does it really help. In my case, it has been, figuratively speaking, a life savior. So, I’d like to know, am I an outlier or has other had similar experience?
ps. apologizes for sounding like a douche
