Are my "Qualifications" Likely to get me an interview for Career Change to ER?
While I have always enjoyed researching the markets and have been a professional researcher for a while now (albeit in a different industry), I have been thinking for a long time about taking the leap and changing careers to Equity Research. I am finally mentally ready to go this route, but my question is what the likelihood is that employers will see my resume and even consider me for an interview. I have attached the resume below with all identifying details removed. I am used to the world of academic resumes, so I'm sure that this is probably severely lacking formatting-wise, but the reason that I'm posting this in the "ER" forum rather than in the "resume" forum is that I am more interested in whether or not my experience/education is likely to get me an interview for a sell-side or buy-side equity research job or not, and if not, what are some things I could do to enhance my qualifications between now and applying for jobs? Also, I know pretty much nobody in the equity research world, so how should I go about applying in the first place? Should I just submit via banks' online portals and hope I get noticed? What types of places should I apply to and expect to be considered at all?
Any help or feedback would be much appreciated.
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Probs good if the sector you interview for in ER is related to the politics research that you worked on.
Can I ask why you are even interested in ER? Its not exactly a booming industry these days.....
Because while I'd love to run my own hedge fund, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon regardless of the P/L on my own and clients' personal accounts. That said, my favorite part of my freelance investment advisory work has been analyzing companies and sectors. Combine that with the fact that as an academic, I have essentially been a professional researcher, writer, and teacher (with the responsibility to communicate these ideas to an audience of students) for years now and I think ER is more up my alley than, say, IB. Not to mention I really need a change and think the work in ER would be stimulating (not to say it is stimulating for everyone, but I think it would be for me). My ultimate goal is eventually to be a PM on the buyside, so ER also seems a kind of natural place to start given that I don't have nearly the profile I imagine would be required for a buyside role, unless you think I'm wrong on that of course. But in any case, I think ER itself would be an interesting career path regardless anyway. Do you have any thoughts on this, given my rationale?
Here are my 2 cents, the PM/investment management/hedge fund industry has really been running into issues these past couples of years due to a couple of factors, one is that fundamental analysts have trouble generating a higher return than the market, simply put that information is so widely available, that market inefficiencies are not common anymore. So clients can purchase an index fund that generates the same return as a human managed fund for a lot less in fees.
On the other hand, sell-side ER is a dying industry as most of the research they generate is not useful and most analyst subscribe to a herd mentality, as it is less risky to agree with other analysts or company management, than come out with their own unique outlook. So essentially, they are just amplifying what everybody already knows about the company.
TL:DR - I would not reccommend going into either of these industries as they are both on the decline.
The position you take on fundamental analysis/active management is, of course, a pretty common one now, though I'd go so far as to say it is emblematic of a "herd mentality" in an of itself, given the obviously illogical assumption that stock market indexes will always go up "over the long term" (e.g. see the Nikkei 225, which is still more than 20% off it's 1991 high...). If I've learned anything from political analysis, it's that ecological fallacy and fallacy of division are basically par for the course regarding "common knowledge" based on popular statistics. Sure, there are plenty of bad investment managers, but assuming the industry is going to die just because there are index funds and people are increasingly happy to track the S&P 500 (believing it will always go up over the long term, since it always has in the past), is like saying that the profession of Virologist is dying off because now we have an increasing number of vaccines and there hasn't been a bad pandemic in a while. Anyway, I believe you that the ER industry is less robust than it was, and sure, asset management clearly faces many headwinds that it'll have to navigate as an industry, but I don't buy that you're basically saying I'm trying to enter the VHS business here...
That was a great response. Sb +1
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