I’m currently working for JPMorgan Chase as a personal Banker. After long search, I finally landed an interview with CRG (Coleman Research Group) as a research associte. My background, I’m 25 years old, currently sitting for CFA Level 1 in december. I didn’t get to study much yet, due to intensive job search. I got an offer from Samsung, completely irrelevant to what I’m doing but it’s a sound job. So here I am, I have a phone interview next week, and I’ve been trying to do research on the job title, but there isn’t much info on the website itself. Anyone have any advices? Here is the job description. Our researchers’ primary role is to identify experts able to meet the needs of our institutional investor clients, qualify them, prepare them and schedule their telephone meeting with our clients. Our researchers also identify market trends, establish new relationships with industry professionals and build upon existing ones. Successful researchers at Coleman Research Group are intellectually curious, poised when interacting with senior executives, organized, energetic and have excellent telephone manners and speaking skills. Researchers work closely with sales and account management teams; creating a great opportunity for researchers to learn about the financial services industry. Requirements: Minimum of 1 Year of working experience A degree from a top tier university, GPA will be considered Sales experience is a plus Excellent communication skills Leadership qualities, positive energy, the ability to adapt to change in a fast paced environment
this job will have very little do with research in the equity/fixed income research sense. coleman research group sounds a lot like gerson lehrman. what they do is provide access to institutional investors to industry experts. say if you’re a hedge fund analyst working on energy investments and you want to speak to a geologist. you would pay a firm like gerson or coleman commissions to facilitate a conversation. a lot of academics and people in industry are on the payrolls of firms like gerson and coleman. obviously when these industry executives work for publiclly traded companies there is a huge conflict of interest. even though your title is “research associate” if you read the job description your not doing anything remotely close to research on securities if that is your goal (and since you are sitting for L1). i suppose the only potential might be networking opportunities. i worked for a hedge fund that used a similar service and we didn’t have any interaction with the people sourcing their “council members” (which is what they call their experts). all we did was speak to our account managers to set up meetings and sign up for luncheons. definitely was not looking to poach them for analyst roles. imo, bottom line = keep looking. hope this helps.
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Thank you for the input stylemog. Currently, I’m in Financial Services, I’m a salesman in a fancy suit. I’m looking to get out of sales, and go into coroporate side. I can’t break into the analyst world without certain expriences. I’m looking at this opportunity as a stepping stone to break into the analyst world. What I do is very far from the actual analyst work, but I believe this work is atleast a few inches closer.
i’m actually not sure if that work is that much closer – i think what you’ll be doing is probably more on the sales side than the research side. i agree with stylemog in that this opportunity is very similar to something you might see at GLG - not a bad job to be sure, but it’s definitely much more of a sourcing role and if your intent is to get into financial research, this might take you even further away from your end goal because remember if you take a job like this, you have to figure it’ll be at least 1-2 more years before you have the chance to move onto something else (lest you risk looking like you’re flighty)
Hm. Thanks again the job description is very vague on the site. I’m a personal banker but I made over 85k last year, and for retail it isn’t too shabby. But I’m at a point where money isn’t even an issue, as long as I can eat, pay rent and bills, I’m willing to take a pay dip to get the necessary experience. If anyone cares, I’ll keep you guys posted after wednesday. Thank you so much again for the support AF.
davexlee Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hm. Thanks again the job description is very vague > on the site. I’m a personal banker but I made > over 85k last year, and for retail it isn’t too > shabby. > > But I’m at a point where money isn’t even an > issue, as long as I can eat, pay rent and bills, > I’m willing to take a pay dip to get the necessary > experience. If anyone cares, I’ll keep you guys > posted after wednesday. Thank you so much again > for the support AF. understood. but what we’re saying is that it’s doubtful that this job will even be a stepping stone and if you intend to stay for a year or two that’s two years of wasted time you could have spent looking for another job. even a back/middle office job at a bank would be better because you could internally transfer to the type of role you want. but there is nothing within coleman that will bring you closer to where you want to be.
Seems like his mind is made up that this job IS closer to what he wants…despite everyone telling him hiring managers wont see it this way…
agreed with kevinf12… stylemog knows what he’s talking about my thought is that if you don’t want to hear the advice, better to keep the questions to yourself
no no it’s not that. I understand and I will take the advice. Never anywhere in my post did I say I didn’t agree with what style said. As a matter of fact I thanked him for his advice.
I use Gerson Lehman…and Vista Research as well. Its still relationship managing. If I have a project and I need to talk to someone, the associate at GLG makes it happen. Its even more on the sell side than the sell side…cause they dont run any $. $1000/per call. Im not sure what the spread is though.