work experience approval process

I can’t seem to find related information of CFA wesbite. Any help would be appreciated

Yes, it is a pain. These are the steps I think - 1. Fill the work experience in your profile 2. Tell your sponsors to fill the sponsorship form 3. After the second sponsor fill the form, CFAI will review the work experience. It would take 2 weeks, although they say that it take 4-6 weeks. 4. After that your local society will review your application 5. If all that is gone favorably, you need to pay the membership fees and then you get the charter. Two of my work ex were rejected because they were too brief. I modified them and now waiting again for them to review.

OK so they only place we describe work experience is on the profile? I thought we have to describe it in some application email.

Yes thats right. But you can send the email with your work ex to cmservices@cfainstitute.org

Do the sponsors have to meet any specific criteria, or is enough if they are charterholders and co-workers?

one needs to be a charterholder and one either a charterholder or your supervisor. funny thing is that you don’t really need to know them prior to them sponsoring you. if you don’t know them all you need to do is send a description of your work and then they have to decide if they think you work qualifies or not

Thank you, florinpop. So I guess having some charterholders you get along with as co-workers may ease the process quite a bit.

Just a hint: put enough details when entering your work experience. I wrote sth like 100 words for each job description, focusing on its relevancy to either research, analysis, PM. You’ll be happy not to be obliged to give more details once reviewed, and then to wait another 2-3 weeks to get your email approval to use the designation. Aloha

Do the charterholders have to be part of your local society? Can I have 2 sponsors (CFA charterholders) that are part of a different society than myself?

If at least one of your references is a CFA charterholder, you only need two references. Apparently you can contact your local society to put you in touch with a local CFA charterholder.

If none of your references are CFA charterholders, you need three references.

But what about local vs non local? Do you need at least one local if you have 2 references? I have a hard time believing some charterholder who knows nothing about you will vouch for you.

Also, does you reference have to be a former or current employer? Or can I just use 2 colleagues that are charterholders?

Off the top of my head, i’m pretty sure the charterholder has to be from the same local society that you are applying to join (i.e. you have to nominate which local society you’d like to join). Interpreting the rules as i understand them, if you are nominating two references, the charterholder (or one of the charterholders if both are charterholders), has to be a member of your chosen local society.

I agree, asking some random charterholder, who has no idea who you are, to vouch for you is weird. I suspect its a relic from the old days when you had to get ‘invited’ into the club.

Instead of hassling a random charterholder, I chose to nominate 3 non-charterholders who were ex-supervisors i worked for during the 48 months work experience I submitted with my application.

Ultimately your best bet is to email CFA to get confirmation…

Membership application is a horrible long pain-staking process - but worth it!!!