What does it take to become a financial analyst from a non-finance background?
This is an interesting question to me. I actually jumped the other way about 3 months ago, going from an FA position with a Fortune 100 company to sales analytics job with a much smaller employer. Addressing salary: I wouldn’t be too sure that FA is a guaranteed moneymaker. There are a lot of analytical jobs in the sales dept. that can get tied into comissions or bonuses. For instant, a pricing manager may get a % of corporate revenue if they hit targets, etc. As for an FA position, I’d caution you to ask a lot of questions at any interview. There are a lot of ‘Financial Analyst’ positions that are little more than balancing a checkbook: boring, go-nowhere jobs where you won’t learn anything. To advance far in any sizeable organization, you will need to earn a CFA or a CPA. At the very least, I would suggest getting an MBA with a finance major. My last company had a corporate governance decree that everyone working in finance had to have a finance degree. An online course like the one
Will an online course like this one financial analysis gear me up in a short time? Since you have no prior experience in finance, you’ll be coming in at entry-level. Understanding concepts like net present value and DCF (covered in the course) will help but not in the way you think. They’ll help because during the interviews, they show you’re serious about getting into finance and you understand the basics. whatelse shall I do to get myself ready besides taking classes from a university? Research the type of field and the firms in the field heavily. There’s a lot of variety out there – retail/commercial/investment banking, private equity, credit (cards), consulting, insurance, accounting, etc. Talk to family, friends, acquaintances and friends of friends who work in these areas. How likely will companies hire someone like me with strong background in data analysis but none from financial perspective? It will be more difficult but again, not in the way you think. A monkey could do the s
At these places, an FA is considered an intern that gets worked to the bone – if you do salary/hr calculation, it’s not pretty. Ultimately, they want someone who’s confident and motivated and regardless of what you may think, a 10-20% bump over your current salary won’t carry you through an extra 40 hours per week. 2-year commitments are standard in i-banking so they want someone who will last all the way through. First-year investment banking analysts (first year out of undergrad) at bulge bracket firms made $55k salary + $80k bonus for top-tier this year (the average mid-tier analyst probably made ~$70k in bonus). So $135k total at 90 hours/week is about $29/hr. Banks are having to pay up now since the hedge funds and private equity firms are paying so well and hiring so many. The hourly wage calculations are much better than they were a few years ago, but it’s still not worth selling your soul (even for 2 years). If you want to get into i-banking on the junior levels, you usually ha
