Update: Career

Now that I have finally passed the CFA level one examination. I am proceeding to take the level two in June 2013. Yup, it is next year. No point taking it this June as I am pretty confident that I will fail as I wont have enough time to study with my working hours. Actually my working hours are not long just that it is really tiring with those daily deadlines. Plus, I am already started studying a little now. Due to its wide range of studying materials, its better for my brain to absorb if I study earlier.

I got confirmed on the very first day when I stepped into a complete six months. My manager even told me that I will get confirmed prior to the confirmation & performance evaluation interview. I am not surprised for that as I will think that I have serious problem during production if I don’t get confirmed.

So, days after confirmation, I have decided to pursue my dream job as financial analyst with other companies. I called for another face-to-face interview with my manager to discuss about my resignation. He suggested to me it’s better not to leave the company right now because the job requirement for financial analyst requires a minimum of one year related experience. And with my current job it provides me with the necessary experience in order for me to advance to my dream job later on. Yeah, he was right about that, I don’t see any financial analysis job out there in the market that would to hire fresh graduates. My manager has been in this financial industry for like more than 20 years, I have no doubt that his explanation is true. Also, he would arrange me to a different team to learn about different financial products like over the counter swaps and so on. He added that he will assign some project based work for me, aside from my daily routine production, in order to enhance my qualification as an analyst. After the interview, I dropped my idea of resigning at this time. It is just another 4 more months for me to complete (on June 1^st) one year (plus the two months termination notice it would add up to 1 year on August 1^st), so there is no harm staying. 

He really hopes that I could stay because of a number of reasons. First is that he said I am doing above average and hope that I could continue to provide more help/idea to the team. After all, I have provided a few mini ideas to improving team efficiency throughout my probation period where others did not seem to bother (I am serious about this, they just want to do their job and go home). I am not sure if he said this in order for me to stay for his benefit, but I weighed it too, I could potentially benefit from him by learning from him through the side projects.

He did actually help me in performing excel macro. The commands in visual basics are really different and its not something that I could learn in days. He taught me a different approach to learn it. After all, he really put effort in explaining to me. Great! Today I applied some of the visual basics to improve one of my team daily tasks, voluntarily, and I did it. The team is going to use it tomorrow (hopefully). I am really excited about this new skill; it would really simplify complicated stuff, works like miracle.

With this, I believe I have put my quarter life crisis, phase 1 to an end. I have regain confidence and looking forward for more improvements. I really want to thank those who play a part in assisting me.