Career Advice, S&P Research Assistant or FP&A with a REIT. Trying to position for ER.

Hello. Long time WSO follower here.

I'm in between two offers and I was looking to see if I could get some advice, as to which one would be better to achieve my long-term goals.

First off, a little background on me. I graduated last year with a degree in Finance from a non-target based in Florida. While there I did a FP&A internship with a software company. Shortly after graduating I moved up to NYC in hopes to get in to Financial Services, more specifically Equity Research.

I've been unsuccessful in starting a position in ER so I'm doing my best to position myself for it in the future; i.e. taking the CFA (registered for Level II) and thinking about going back to school after a few years.

The two jobs offers I am considering are:

1) An Analyst role in a public REIT's FP&A department. Here, because the team is so small, I will get my hands in a lot of what the company is doing. The organization does not have an investor relations team so much of the role will be supporting the CFO and his team with things like earnings calls.

2) A Research Assistant position with Standard and Poor's. While this seems like a better choice, the problem with this position is that it is with S&P's Data Strategy Operations (DSO) group. DSO is tasked with managing S&P's ratings database, making sure the ratings committee has the correct data about the company they're rating, and making sure the ratings get disseminated correctly and in a timely manner. After reading on S&P's website and interviewing with the hiring manager it seems that it is very possible to move to an analyst role with the firm after completing the CFA and working for a couple years as a research assistant.

My issue with this position is the group it's with. Seems to be really back office.

Being that the end goal is a career in Equity Research, which of these two offers can better position me?

Also, would either of them look better experience wise for an MBA program?

Sorry for the long winded post.

Thanks in advance!