Just to clarify, your sales position was a FT position, yet you took on an unpaid role just to get your foot in the door? #Respect.
Correct, though as mentioned, I was actually without work when I pitched myself as an intern. My dad thought I was nuts.
I have so many student loans I couldn’t even consider an unpaid internship for probably 3-4 years. Unless dad decided to sponsor me. God that would suck.
This is a great story. Was this before the crisis?
No, I made it through the crisis unscathed, working in sales. This was a bit after the market had bottomed and the recovery had started.
I have a similar story with that of Supersadface’s but I’m probably a lot luckier. Let me know if anyone is interested in hearing it.
Please Share!
This forum is usaully a really depressing place regarding jobs. Of course you should share!
it was a great story up there. Mine is nothing close to a success stroy, but fortunately, one day it will be. As follow:
I was a bartender at age 23 (1998) in a foreign country (did a lot of shitty jobs before that). I had stopped school at age 17 due to responsabilites. decided to move to US with some insignificant savings for a better streak of luck. learned english, I always wanted to be a trader, I got my series 7, 55, 63, 3 within 18 months of landing in this great country. Found a job in an undisclosed administrator/custodian as a fund specialist (hedge funds), worked there for a few years (outside of US), got back to US as I got a position at a BD as a trainee (sell side) in PA. worked there for a few years, made my mark as I brougth in many clients. Moved to NYC and stayed without a job for a full year (2004). decided to go to college as a long distance and at the same time got a job in buyside in a hedge fund as a marketer, was able to raise loads of capital for them, became independent consultant, took on more clients. I graduate without advertising it in 2007 (A student) By the time 2008 hit, I am in management consultant and part of acquistions teams. I ended up, among other thing as the head of a mangement team for a large Fof in Europe, reporting to the conglomerate owners in US. fund goes down, I became a sort of liquidator and managing explosive situations one after the other. 2012, I decide to take my CFA in order to gain credit and open opportinties that don’t end up in shaky situations. ethics and knowledge, that’s the key in this industry.
Persistence is one of the greatest quality.
If you think this place is depressing, you should have been to the NYSSA social event in New York son Thursday! So many job seekers, a bunch of folks in back office trying to network in any possible way and one guy that was doing wealth management at Morgan Stanley who kept bragging about how he needs to know so many different stocks and financial instruments for his job. Askes him what his view on gold was and why he was long Apple and he could barely eke out an answer. It was really painful…for him. I would hate to have this guy as my money manager.
^ Yep that’s what those events are like.
The thing about networking events is that they are for people with no network. People who are already plugged in never go to those. So it makes you wonder what the point is at all. I think direct contact with some kind of value add (like a stock write up) is a better way to network in this business.
This is like a movie lol.
I had no idea what these events would be like. It was my first one. Probably won’t be going back to one unless there are free drinks.
^ you can forget about free drinks. Although at the NYSSA office which is open to members anytime, they do have free soda, coffee and tea
I’m going to my alumni association networking event this month just for the free drinks. That and its the only week this month I’m not traveling so I’m probably going to be too bored to not go.
Here goes.
I also graduated from an OK school with unexceptional grades (5/2005). Started out as an electrical engineering major in college (throwing this in because it becomes important later in the story), took a few years off to pursue other endeavors, came back and couldn’t hack engineering while working full time. Switched to Econ and found out why all the liberal arts kids partied so much. I had no clue what I wanted to do but finance seemed to be interesting after a professor in one of my econ classes showed us ”The Trillion Dollar Bet” in class. I thought working as a banker would get me into the field. I applied to all the entry level banker positions in my state after graduating. I finally got a job at a major US bank 6 months later. I was super excited and thought I was breaking into the world of high finance. I should have known better when the hiring manager was more concerned about my retail sales experience than my degree.
The banking job was okay at first. I had a chance to learn about home equity loans, demand deposit accounts (fancy way of saying checking account), and other retail banking products. But soon after training, the heat got turned up and they wanted me to produce – opening new accounts, bringing in loan dollars, making partner referrals. My retail experience ended up being more important than my academic background. It was definitely not the type of professional job I was expecting. It felt more like selling used cars - trying to wring every last product from each customer that was at my desk. At the same time, I was just happy to have a job and worked extremely hard. I ended up meeting all the top production metrics within a couple of quarters.
My hard work also got my foot into the licensing program which was a sweat deal. I basically got paid for five weeks to study for the 7 & 66. I felt like I had finally arrived after getting my licenses. However, I soon became disenchanted and realized I was still just a sales person. But again, I put my head down and plugged away.
The licensed bankers paired up with brokers and I became good friends with mine. He knew I wasn’t happy with what I was doing and suggested I talk to some people in the wealth management group. He knew the head of the trust department and got me an information interview with her. After our meeting, she thought asset management was the place I needed to be. She in turn got me in front of the regional manager of the portfolio managers. Within a month of these information interviews, a fixed income analyst position with the money market alternative/liquidity group opened up. I wasn’t sure about it because I perceived bonds to be boring (silly assumption). However, the broker I worked with, the trust department head, and the manager of the PMs thought it would be a perfect job for me. I applied and all three of them put in calls to the hiring manager. I later found out that some high level business bankers I had worked with also put in calls. Needless to say, I got an interview. The people in the department at the time say that I got the job because the hiring manager nearly wet herself when I was able to hold up a conversation about differential equations with her. The manager didn’t care about previous finance experience but wanted someone highly analytical. So the couple of years I spent in the engineering college really paid off. I was hired in September of 2007 and flying to New York within a month to talk to ABCP dealers. It was just the start of many fire drills to come. Bonds are definitely not boring. I’ve since moved into the research team covering industrial issuers.
The advice I have is to work hard at whatever position you’re in, never burn a bridge, and network as much as you can. It’s funny that I’m the one giving information interviews now and more than happy to do them.
I didn’t realize you were there as well.
Nice!! Well bpdulog, if I was there and if numi was speaking to me, I would barely “eke” out an answer because I don’t follow Apple that closely. They don’t issue debt. I would be pretty speechless about gold too. I might have rattled something off of worrying about the printing press at the Treasury but would not be able to intelligently argue a position. At the same time, I’m specialized in the credit arena so I wouldn’t brag about all the different financial instruments I knew about.
I was just sharing my story because I thought it might give some folks inspiration knowing a plain bloke like me ended up as an analsyt. I consider myself extremely lucky and feel like the stars were perfectly aligned when I got my job.
I have no problem with people not knowing about this or that – there are many things in this world I don’t know anything about. It’s just that if you’re going to go to a networking event and act like you’re the Big Kahuna on AAPL stock (or any other security for that matter), you might as well make sure you at least have a basic 30-second pitch about why you like the company, and one that doesn’t involve how much your wife loves her new iPhone apps.