After googling for the umpteenth time, how to become rich, without dropshipping, nft and other scams. You have come across Finance as a field offering promises of untold riches. You google some more and go down the rabbit hole, to see that management consultants and investment bankers are the ones making the most dough. Ok, so that's decided, let's become one. You again ask the all knowing crystal ball, how to become a banker slash consultant and are immediately greeted with courses, degrees and programs you can purchase to become one in 15, 30, 90 days depending on how generous and urgent your needs and relaxed your wallet balance are.
You buy these $10 courses on udemy and get a primer on some basic things with respect to finance and banking. You put these up in your resume and send them off to a recruiter in hopes of getting the interview calls and the $100,000 paychecks soon. To your surprise you find out they don't want you! You get rejection mails from all the big bulge bracket firms (Goldman and likes) and big 3 consulting companies (MBB). You fish deeper with other mid tier firms and big 4, but same results. Surprisingly no one considers your CV good enough to even warrant a call!
This may not be your story, if you are an any IVY, top 5 engineering or undergrad student, with great grades and extra curriculars, but sadly this is the case for most of the finance job hopefuls out there. These firms get a lot of 'supply' of talented individuals from all over the world. And the 'demand' or the roles existing are quite few. Before your CV even reaches a human, it needs to have necessary keywords to get picked up for a review by a human resource personnel. ( if you need any help in boosting and reviewing your CV click here to check out our upcoming CV tool). Make sure to vote for it in the What's new section on the right of this screen if you want it!
This is where a professional certification helps, instead of doing courses from Udemy, udacity etc, invest in completing a professional certification. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you trust a doctor without an MD with just a Udemy certification? or a lawyer without a Bar license? There are similar 'licenses' in the financial field as well. And among them CFA charter is one of the more renowned, respected and globally recognized finance certification. It is a globally recognized standard for measuring the proficiency and integrity of finance and investment professionals.
CFA program not only widens your knowledge in various subjects in investment analysis such as security analysis, statistics, probability, derivatives and economics. But also provides an easy benchmark for recruiters to pit you against other candidates. In short a CFA charter tells any recruiter, "this person is a qualified professional who has invested over 1000 hours, completing masters level finance electives and has 4 years of relevant experience in the financial services industry." Just by having those 3 letters against your name, you can tell so much, without even speaking a word. And since most of the people in the industry know the grit and hardwork required to get a charter, they immediately know that you are hardworking, smart, have a work ethic and able to dig deep and clear tough obstacles. Now who doesn't want that person?
