It has been a long and painful job search since I took the second CFA exam in June, still to no avail. I am hoping to find a TA job at IB or even a middle office role near a desk. Please feel free to criticise. If anything that is of any help to any job seekers out there. I am glad to be of any help. Cheers. Experience Registered investment advisory firm managing assets of over $2 billion, New York Trading Assistant (2006-present) • Support five portfolio managers on a variety of responsibilities that include booking trades, investigating trade breaks, sending trade allocations on prime broker trades and ad hoc projects • Contact brokers to inquire about their inventories including municipal, corporate and agency fixed income products • Seek competitive bid/ask prices with various fixed income desks • Perform equity and fixed income market surveillance for portfolio managers to identify relative value opportunities and generate ideas • Produce morning and afternoon reports to reflect market color and performances of each position on approved and watch list Portfolio Administrator (2005-2006) • Confirmed trade executions, reconciled positions, and ensured settlements for over 1,000 portfolios • Performed daily and monthly position reconciliation with various custodians, maintained performance figures and generated detailed reports on a daily, monthly basis • Processed corporate action, dividend and interest payment and fixed income maturity • Opened new accounts at various custodians & provided client services on asset and fund transfers • Maintained security master file and setup new accounts in the firm’s portfolio management system
WORDY! why are your bullet points so long. I couldn’t be bothered to read a single one of them (with that said, i made a second attempt to actually read your resume, but let the fact i had to exert effort to do so tell you something…) I really hope you use a good chunk of ‘white space’ in your actual resume. I don’t think you can do much with your experience. but if you want IB then you need to highlight transferable skills that they are looking for such as a broad understanding of hte capital markets, ability to model and so forth. hopefully the other sections of your resume cover this off cuz it certainly doesn’t shine through in your experience section.
strikershank Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don’t think you can do much with your > experience. but if you want IB then you need to > highlight transferable skills that they are > looking for such as a broad understanding of hte > capital markets, ability to model and so forth. he said a TA job at an IB so his experience is relevant.
Where did i say his experience was irrelevant? (that’s right, i didn’t). I said that he doesn’t highlight his transferable skills properly because it doesn’t show through in his experience section.
Try and quantify some of your previous experiences. Show how you improved the company to operate more effectively and efficiently. I’m a PA too, have implemented any sort of process to improve efficiency on the job?
TA = Technical Analysis, or does it mean something else?
stylemog Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > strikershank Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > I don’t think you can do much with your > > experience. but if you want IB then you need to > > highlight transferable skills that they are > > looking for such as a broad understanding of > hte > > capital markets, ability to model and so forth. > > he said a TA job at an IB so his experience is > relevant. how do you know he is not a she?
TA = Technical Analysis, or does it mean something else? Trade assistant?
TA = trading assistant
trading…dammit, wrong again.
Shucks, I thought T&A experience was something totally different… ;-(
judging by that CV, there is not a lot T&A experience…
12 posts, and now it’s highjacked, haha. T&A only happens at the christmas party.
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/103946/Party-Your-Way-to-a-New-Job As useless as this may be, it just might work.
Nobody will even read this - one glance says “oh yeah, garden-variety TA/BOM. I know dozens. And I’ve seen a billion of these resumes”. Sorry, but I would just summarize that with “warm body TA”. So if you’re looking for a warm body TA job, this might do it. What might be a better approach is to identify the position and then provide a list of skills you learned or successes that you had. The most promising line from your resume is "Perform equity and fixed income market surveillance for portfolio managers to identify relative value opportunities and generate ideas ". Could you write something like “Identified relative value opportunities for PM’s using [blah technology]. Trades generated using this technique resulted in daily trade activity of $78,000,000,000 and profits of approximately 40%” (or perhaps scale down a bit). That’s the kind of thing that generates interest and discussion. There’s some book I read awhile back where some MD is berating a TA and says “An F-ing dog could do this job. Someone get me an f-ing dog” You want to tell people that you are in a TA job but that is squandering your talent, not that you are good at a TA job (unless a TA job is your goal…not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
mni Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Registered investment advisory firm managing > assets of over $2 billion, New York > Trading Assistant (2006-present) > • Support five portfolio managers on a variety of > responsibilities that include booking trades, > investigating trade breaks, sending trade > allocations on prime broker trades and ad hoc > projects > • Contact brokers to inquire about their > inventories including municipal, corporate and > agency fixed income products > • Seek competitive bid/ask prices with various > fixed income desks > • Perform equity and fixed income market > surveillance for portfolio managers to identify > relative value opportunities and generate ideas > • Produce morning and afternoon reports to reflect > market color and performances of each position on > approved and watch list Why did you order your bullets this way? The first thing on the list is your BO responsibilities. When I focus on your experience, I don’t see a LII candidate… individually: " • Support five portfolio managers on a variety of responsibilities that include booking trades, investigating trade breaks, sending trade allocations on prime broker trades and ad hoc projects" Does this even need to be included? If so, focus on supporting five PM’s, not booking trades. You should make this the last bullet if you include it at all. “• Contact brokers to inquire about their inventories including municipal, corporate and agency fixed income products” This should probably be ranked lower and reworded. lose words and focus on how you discussed potential investments with institutional sales reps. “• Seek competitive bid/ask prices with various fixed income desks " Better wording but phrase it more like you’re actually trading. This should be listed higher. " • Perform equity and fixed income market surveillance for portfolio managers to identify relative value opportunities and generate ideas • Produce morning and afternoon reports to reflect market color and performances of each position on approved and watch list” These to are the juice of your experience and should be listed first. Consider consolidating by saying something like “Generate equity and fixed income reasearch” and then make sub-bullets that describe your reports in detail i.e. *Produced our Axe-Lists *Developed a system for risk management that alerted PM’s when positions reached proprietary alert levels (bad wording on my part…), etc… Don’t focus on the “how”, you can talk about that in your interview. I started out as a TA, and the way I describe my experience on my resume is by making it sound like I took a disorganized trading desk and turned it into a well-oiled machine. I think you’re on the right track to making that point, you just need to make it clearer…
^ good advice and since you did what s/he is trying to do you need to help…
Also, consider listing your education/CFA stuff first (make sure you do it concisely though…). This will remind HR that you really want to/can do something more analytic which is the goal of your search…
Thank you, guys. I really appreciate all your inputs. Very juicy stuff indeed. I will made changes accordingly. My resume does make me look very BOMish.
Just to add, I didn’t stress on the CFA experience because I think it somehow adversely affected my chances of getting into the middle office roles. I lost a job offer because I sounded too eager to move up in the rank with a IB for their hybrid product team. I know for sure because they told me so. Though, I understand why all hiring mangers want someone slow and steady for middle office roles.