Moderator Note (Andy): ZaZa resides in Abu Dhabi and works as a recruiter for some of the Middle East’s largest sovereign wealth funds and investment banks.
The ultimate and universal question that any recruiter with existing alive candidates gets asked everyday – should I pass the CFA or not? Should I do an MBA or not? Which MBA? And we all start reciting our well-rehearsed answers separated under good-candidates-that-can-be-placed-now (which is a slightly negative answer) or the candidates, which look quite difficult to place in the current market (which is a basic, sure go for it the more expensive the better).
Recently I tried to approach this subject from a different angle. Usually I get asked this, by people I don’t really know, or I have spoken to for about 30 mins going trough their CV, my opinion apparently counts – and I care when my opinion counts. Please read on for ZaZa’s universal-one-fits-all solution to the eternal question. When I get asked that, I immediately respond with another question. What to do you want to be?
Well, ... and here comes the muttering. So let me get this straight, you don't know what you want to be and you want me to give you a good educated answer if you should commit three years of study outside work to get a CFA qualification? Lets start from the beginning, who do you want to be? Where do you want to end up?
Answer Option 1: I want to be rich, billionaire rich = Solution, well look at the top 10 billionaires, do a quick statistic calculation (aside from are you the right star sign), did they do a CFA? Did they do an MBA? No they didn’t, not a single one of the Top 10? Warren Buffet himself, only did his Master’s Degree because his favourite writers were apparently teachers in the university. If you were to do an MBA you would be the first on the Forbes Top 10 richest list with an MBA. If that is what you want go for it, better now then never. Answer Option 2: I want to be a CEO, in that case choose your top 10 CEO’s you like, look what they did and how and mirror and copy it to the maximum. Minor precision here, if you want to be the CEO of your own company the route you take is significantly different than the route if you want to be a CEO of an established company. Copy what the top 10 people have done and this is the only sure way to be on the right path.
Do you see the pattern here? What it means for the everyday investment banker is look at the teams you want to join, look who is heading them. If it is an MBA they need to the same one, if it is a CFA that they value go for it. At the end of the day all falls down to the fact “During this time when you are studying for the CFA, are you capable of inventing facebook?” If after your working hours you still have motivation, drive and energy to study for the CFA, you should theoretically be able to use all of that time to invent something, start a business or… write a blog.
In my personal experience, when I was 17 and I did my first ever summer internship of whole two weeks at Sloane Robinson Investment Management (currently a large UK hedge fund, back then a small start-up fund), I was mentored by George Robinson himself. He is an impressive individual, whom I still think of fondly. He was every inch a genius in my mind, he could take notes on his blackberry in short-hand whilst other were talking in a meeting, he has a CFA and I overall I wanted to be him – I followed with a degree in Mathematics, with an internship in a top tier investment bank, with enrolment on the CFA programme… As life goes the decisions you make at the age of 17 rarely remain the ones that stick with you for life.
“Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get,” said the Cat. “I really don’t care where” replied Alice. “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
No, I am.
When I see someone on CNBC with the letters CFA tagged onto their name, they are usually wearing a sweat-soaked houndstooth suit on the bottom floor of some unknown research house in Birmingham, AL. I'll stick with just my last name.
Hahaha spot on!
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