eFinancialCareers

Many junior-level Wall Streeters look on an MBA as their ticket onto the fast track. But experts warn against thinking an MBA alone can open doors. Only a dozen or so business schools, the ones making up the top tier of MBA programs nationwide, can confer instant credibility to candidates seeking their first bulge-bracket investment banking job. But if your career seems stuck in the slow lane, and Harvard or Columbia... Read more

As more Wall Street firms make use of psychological testing, candidates do have options. Here are some of them. More Wall Street firms are giving job candidates personality tests. If you're required to take one while competing for a position, are there any ways to maximize your opportunities and avoid any pitfalls? It won't help to prepare in the conventional sense by studying or rehearsing, as you would do before an interview,... Read more

Chris Gardner, whose life and career as a stockbroker was the basis for the film The Pursuit of Happyness, says the key to success lies in choosing work that you love. “Do something that you love,” Gardner told eFinancialCareers when asked for his most important piece of advice about building a Wall Street career. “Find something you love, and be bold enough to go do it. If you don’t love it,... Read more

A new government lawsuit against Merrill Lynch provides a fresh reminder that blindly participating in the less polite side of your workplace culture can damage your career. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Merrill under the Civil Rights Act Tuesday, based on a quant analyst's complaint that he was fired after being verbally harassed about being an Iranian and a Muslim. Merrill has denied the allegations, and the five-page EEOC... Read more

As Wall Street resizes itself, applying for jobs while unemployed appears set to become far more ordinary - maybe even respectable. Given all that's going on with layoffs and rumors of layoffs, this may be a good time to jot down the lessons I drew from a recent job search, which took far longer than expected. More than a year ago, after nine years as an analyst of varied fixed-income markets and... Read more

Goldman Sachs is pulling still further away from the pack. That's not good news for the sea of candidates casting wistful glances in its direction. Back in mid-November, we compared several top banks' pre-tax profits, investment banking revenues and firm-wide compensation expenses. Viewing those figures side-by-side, we were struck by how widely they varied - so much so, the old catch-phrase about banking being a highly cyclical industry seemed to miss... Read more

Even in a ragged job market, candidates who get job offers can improve them. The key is being flexible about what you ask for - and having the confidence to ask in the first place. A successful applicant has much to gain and nothing to lose by negotiating details of an offer, says New York career coach Bettina Seidman. Her main caveats: Never bring up salary or perks before an offer... Read more

Where experience is concerned, more isn’t always better. Often it's worse. That's one lesson I drew from my own extended search for new employment after being laid off by a boutique in 2006. An employer who posts an opening calling for "three to five years experience" in a particular sub-specialty might be leery if an applicant has 12 years. In such cases, a candidate’s best bet is to state an experience... Read more

Recently, two sports stories caught my eye by showcasing opposite poles of an issue many financial services professionals grapple with every day: the perceived relationship between job performance and age. One story involves allegations that some of China's star female gymnasts overstated their ages to skirt a long-standing Olympic ban on athletes younger than 16. Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Rebecca Dube made that the jumping-off point for an article about... Read more

What would a recession portend for Wall Street job opportunities and career paths? Something a good bit uglier than what's happened lately. PIMCO's Bill Gross, king of the bond mavens, says the U.S. is already in recession. So does David Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch. And Goldman Sachs, in a research note reported Wednesday, says, "The latest data suggest that recession has now arrived, or will very shortly." It may seem... Read more