Cfa Institute Career Guide Your Professional Journey Has Just Started
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CFA INSTITUTE 6 CAREER 2015—201 GUIDE CFA INSTITUTE 6 CAREER 2015—201 GUIDE Published by CFA Institute. All rights reserved. Copyright 2015 CFA Institute. Materials may not be reproduced or translated without written permission. CFA®, CFA® Program, Chartered Financial Analyst®, CIPM®, Claritas® Investment Certificate, and GIPS® are just a few of the trademarks owned by CFA Institute. See www.cfainstitute.org for a complete list. Disclaimer The articles and opinions expressed in the publication are not necessarily those of CFA Institute. Although every care has been taken in preparing and writing the guide, CFA Institute disclaims and accepts no liability for any errors, omissions, misuse or misunderstanding on the part of any person who uses or relies upon it. Information contained in the charterholder profiles is correct at the time the interview was conducted. Managing Editor: Heda Bayron Writers: Michele Armentrout Liana Cafolla Emily Gillespie I-Ching Ng Editor: Mary-Kate Hines Designer: Iva Sladic Keco Assistant Designer: Ng Ho Chi Publisher: CFA Institute 23/F Man Yee Building 68 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong 2 CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE YOUR PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY HAS JUST STARTED. WHERE WILL IT TAKE YOU? To thrive in the investment industry, one has to be both technically competent and trustworthy. Do you have what it takes to be an investment professional? This Career Guide is designed to help you, as a young professional, identify the necessary building blocks for you to succeed in the invest- ment profession. Education and a professional designation are vital. But as the Chartered Financial Analysts featured in this guide will tell you, learning continues throughout your career. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers never stop acquiring knowledge and skills throughout their careers so as to provide the best level of service to their patients and clients. As the global associ- ation of investment professionals, CFA Institute believes that invest- ment professionals have a duty to do the same in order to meet the needs of society. We designed this guide to highlight skills that our charterhold- ers deemed important to their success. The skills are represented by icons that are explained in the following pages. We also provide vis- ual cues for you to follow each charterholder’s career path as they make major career moves. We hope that this guide will provide you with the essential tools you need to take your career to the next level and help us build a better investment profession. Contents 6 Overview 13 Profiles 14 Jasmine Kang in Hong Kong 16 Nalin Moniz in India 14 16 18 Lisa Lewin in the UK 20 Josh Wu in China 18 20 22 Sammy Yip in Hong Kong 24 Mike Mayo in the US 22 24 26 Sunil Singhania in India 28 Badrulhisyam Fauzi in Malaysia 26 28 30 Garth Bregman in Singapore 32 Kate Misic in Australia 30 32 34 Idris Alimi-Omidiora in the UK 36 Clifford Lau in Singapore 34 36 38 38 Mari Toni Bautista in the Philippines 4 CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE 40 Ndabezinhle Mkhize in South Africa 42 Pablo Matias Sosa in New Zealand 40 42 44 Mónica Gordillo San Juan in Spain 46 Huang Fan in China 44 46 48 Andrew Kophamel in Australia 50 Jayna Gandhi in India 48 50 52 Hortense Bioy in the UK 54 Alberto Jaramillo in Hong Kong 52 54 56 Camila Astaburuaga in the UK 58 Ken Luce in Canada 56 58 60 Timo Schmid in Australia 62 Caroline Li in China 60 62 65 Career Advice 66 How To Use Social Media To Advance Your Career 70 Ethical Mindfulness: A Guide For New Financial Services Professionals 74 Cultural Travelers: Global Careers Cross Boundaries Greater Than Geography 79 About CFA Institute Programs CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE 5 This article is an excerpt from the CFA Institute Research Foundation book Investment Management: A Science to Teach or an Art to Learn? written by Frank J. Fabozzi, CFA, Sergio M. Focardi, and Caroline Jonas. 6 CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE ©iStock.com/Rawpixel Ltd ©iStock.com/Rawpixel Jobs in investment management are much sought after and hard to come by. Many candidates pursue the relatively few openings, so employers can be choosy. We asked human resources managers at asset management firms what they look for in terms of profiles when hiring recent graduates. We also asked them whether there is a best path to landing a job in their firms. CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE 7 WANTED: ANALYTICAL ABILITY. We can see a rise in importance of solid economic reasoning and ability to see the big picture, includ- ing understanding the global macroeconomy and the (geo)political world. For example, HSBC’s group chief economist and global head of economics and asset allo- cation research, Stephen King, had this to say about economists coming into the financial world, typically in research positions: “Although many financial economists specialize in one particular country or region, increasingly they are expected to analyze the impact of events in one part of the world on other regions. Higher oil prices, slowing Chinese growth, new ‘south–south trade,’ and finan- cial linkages—all have potentially large global effects. Our clients expect us to come up with analysis to cast light on these issues. Despite our regional speciali- zation, we cannot afford to treat each country as an island.”1 Most firms we talked to now want both math skills and economic reasoning skills in the same person. Many sources said that the graduates they hire with master’s degrees in finance or economics go on to fill positions on asset management teams or in sales and marketing whereas graduates with advanced degrees in engineering, mathematics, or physics are typically hired for multiasset or systemic groups or for roles in trading and risk management, where the ability to work with data and models is of great importance. Still, firms that are hiring engineers, mathemati- cians, and physicists like to see that the student has taken some courses in economics or finance along the way. The firms want to hire people who have demon- strated an interest in the field of finance and who can think outside their own specialties. Firms with a more traditional style of management may be hiring people with very different academic backgrounds. The head of human resources at one tra- ditional asset manager said that the firm has always been open-minded about its new hires’ fields of study. “We look for diversity,” he commented. “We hire gradu- ates with degrees in history, philosophy, the arts. They bring in different skills, have a different way of look- ing at things.” 1King, Stephen, 2012. “Economists in the Financial Markets.” In What’s the Use of Economics? Teaching the Dismal Science after the Crisis. Edited by Diane Coyle. London: London Publishing Partnership. p. 22 8 CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE WANTED: BROAD KNOWLEDGE. When asked what asset management firms were looking for in graduate recruits, human resources managers most often replied: broad knowledge, ana- lytical skills, sound (macroeconomic) reasoning, cre- ativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Michael Oliver, senior lecturer in finance at Open University and cofounder and director of the firm Global Partner- ship Family Offices, believes that many mathematical finance programs are divorced from events in the real world, which produces economists who can give you an equation for everything but who lack any broader knowledge. “The most recent financial crisis has created a demand for critical thinking. And broad knowledge opens the door to critical thinking. Someone who has developed interests not only in finance but also in questions of history, political economics, philosophy, science, and even the arts has more tools for critically analyzing theories and events.” WANTED: ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE. The ability to communicate and to convince is impor- tant for just about any position at an asset manage- ment firm. With investors, the ability to communicate, to convincingly explain bad performance (whether because of model breakdown or whatever reason), is an important part of an asset manager’s job. The abil- ity to communicate with colleagues inside the firm is also important. Sources remarked on the need to com- municate with one’s peers, to question one’s peers, to have conviction (but also to be able to change one’s mind when presented with new facts or a stronger argument). Without strong communication skills, critical thinking may create conflicts and result in the rejection of good but poorly communicated ideas. Broad knowledge helps in finding convincing paral- lels, in objectivizing positions and ideas, and in plac- ing them in a historical or scientific perspective. ©iStock.com/Rawpixel Ltd ©iStock.com/Rawpixel CFA INSTITUTE CAREER GUIDE 9 WANTED: ABILITY TO REASON. Another important quality short-listed by human resources managers is the ability to reason, to take in large quantities of information, to separate the true information from the noise, and to analyze the data. Again, good macroeconomic reasoning requires an ability to see the big picture. Sources remarked on candidates’ need to have a toolkit for how to analyze a problem that includes both analytical and mathematical skills. Candidates who pass all the initial hurdles are typically grilled by the hiring firm’s asset managers. The objective is to test the candidate’s reasoning and judgment. A source at a fundamental manager explained, “The hiring process is based on a series of conversa- tions. We make candidates talk about what they have done, why they made the decisions they made. We need to see through the person’s thinking process. We also make them talk on topics such as current affairs for up to one hour.