Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor position

I am interviewing for this job. Can anyone share their experiences with this group? I’ve heard that they are primarily salesmen rather than financial advisors.

i hear it’s a life commitment http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=21061766

I worked there… Can you smile and dial lol?? You are a salesman thats all. Not saying its a bad job, lots of potential to make money but if you are not interested in prospecting, running seminars, cold calling, and grinding day to day it may not be for you…

don’t do it. this is a very tough road. I have many friends that tried this, spun their wheels (a lot) and ending up doing something else. I have 1 friend that stuck with it, but he is highly connected.

For most people at a young age, you’ll simply turn your wheels (alot). The best time to break in is in your 40s when you have an extensive network of rich people you can influence. Your odds are certainly better, however, by the time you’re 40 with a CFA/MBA, you’d likely not switchover to selling. Not many people out there have the talent to prospect and convince strangers to hand over millions of dollars.

i hear they give you the axe you if you cant raise 10 million in your first year. Connections are everything.

RycherX Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > For most people at a young age, you’ll simply turn > your wheels (alot). > The best time to break in is in your 40s when you > have an extensive network of rich people you can > influence. Your odds are certainly better, > however, by the time you’re 40 with a CFA/MBA, > you’d likely not switchover to selling. Not many > people out there have the talent to prospect and > convince strangers to hand over millions of > dollars. completely agree. unless you can work for a major producer who might eventually hand over his/her book and you can start to prospect his C clients, i wouldn’t go into the business unless you know a lot of wealthy people (like in the hundreds of millions).

I worked there for 2 years. I would say run away as fast as you can. And yes you are right… all these firms are salesmen. There’s nothing wrong with sales at all, but in the financial services industry there is just a huge conflict of interest. Sales in other fields are honorable if the product/service provides a valuable benefit and the salesman fully understands the product. And I’m not saying that because I failed. I was actually a National Director Award Winner. But I was never happy in that field. Even if you make a lot of money, if you’re not adding value to your clients how can you feel good about yourself. You would be better served to do some other type of sales where you can honestly give the client a benefit for their money. I’ve always felt that if you can’t explain exactly why a client lost money, you shouldn’t be managing money or selling financial products/services. There are a lot of these threads going around right now. Must be a lot of recent college grads looking for work.

Moreover, I’d also discourage newly minted MBAs from going into Private Wealth Management, at least firms that are very entrepreneurial. I believe these places recruit both proven wirehouse advisors and MBAs from good school with the former having a higher chance of success. The only difference between Private Wealth and Retail brokerage is the account size (selling porsches vs selling Hondas). If serving the wealthy is your calling, I’d recommend going into a place where they feed you introductions from other parts of the bank. My thinking is most don’t.

I have a question that relates to this somewhat (I do not mean to threadjack). Is a financial advisor the same as a financial service representative? Thanks

if you want to get into PWM you’d be nuts to waste money on an MBA.

oskigo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > if you want to get into PWM you’d be nuts to waste > money on an MBA. better to go to law school at night.

In my first job out of undergrad I worked as a FA at Morgan. Someof the advisors were total scum. They had absolutely no idea what they were doing and were only concerned with making money. There were a couple times my jaw dropped as I witnessed flat out illegal behavior. On the other hand, there were a few (and I stress a few) who were decent people. I would highly advise never working as a financial advisor unless you are 100% passionate about selling, cause that is all you will do… all day, everyday.