What would you do? - Tough choice to make in coming days

Hi guys,

I have a tough choice to make in the coming days and even though I think I made a decision, I wanted to bounce the issue off you and listen to other opinions (if you will reply to this post, please mention your background...school, working in ER, HR....etc).

Currently I am in corporate finance at the biggest global company in its sector - I have been doing it for a year and I already won a couple of internal awards for my practices and initiatives. I was even offered a promotion but it means relocating to the midwest in the US to our North American HQ - currently I reside in Toronto.

My passion is ER - friends and coworkers say that 'you have analyst writen all over your forehead', I live and sleep on market news.

I graduated from my MBA during the crisis so rather than staying at home - I got some corporate finance experience (my current job). Now as the market (at least in Canada) is recovering I have had several interviews for ER associate roles. Even though I made it to final round in every single one of them, I was second or third and never got the offer.

So now I have to make a tough choice - 1) quit my current job and stay in Toronto and keep trying (staying at my current role is not an option as the role will not exist anymore) OR 2) stay with the company and move to the US and keep applying from there.

As I am only a Canadian citizen, I would be working in US on a TN NAFTA Visa which is specific to the employer - so if I decide to switch jobs, I have to get a new Visa for the new job which may hinder me in the first place to attain the interview. Furthermore, the capital markets in that midwest city is pretty bad so I don't think I can get the same opportunities as in Toronto.

I don't want to make this post too long so if you have further questions please let me know.

I am tending to stay in Toronto but I just want to hear to some fresh opinions.

3 Comments
 
Best Response
I graduated from my MBA during the crisis so rather than staying at home - I got some corporate finance experience (my current job). Now as the market (at least in Canada) is recovering I have had several interviews for ER associate roles. Even though I made it to final round in every single one of them, I was second or third and never got the offer.
This is pretty typical. Banks interview a lot of people and usually only hire a few. For my position, my manager interviewed 40 people.

What people don't tell you is that a lot of experienced hire candidates do a lot of interviews, too.

I would recommend going back over the interview and thinking about what went well and what went badly- and what you would have said, instead. If possible, email some of the folks and ask them what went well and what went badly so you can do better next time.

I don't want to make this post too long so if you have further questions please let me know.

I am tending to stay in Toronto but I just want to hear to some fresh opinions.

One other thought- are there any hedge funds in Toronto that you might be interested in working at? Most hedge funds need proprietary research guys with industry knowledge. Also, how close is this midwestern city to Chicago? Northern Trust is huge in wealth management and they probably have an ER arm that rivals some of the large NYC BBs- likely with positions in Toronto. You might be able to start your interviews there and finish them in Toronto or the location where they'd be hiring you.
 

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