Hoping to move to NYC need advise on jobs

Dutz

Hi, i'm hoping to move over to NYC next year after i finish my last exam to be a qualified financial advisor and i'm just wondering if there are much options career wise that i could get into and make my QFA useful?

Ajos

I know squat about QFAs or what your career options are here, but I do know what it's like to be looking for a job in New York. I wrote a long, rambling blog entry about my first year here that pretty much covers my ups and downs. Everybody told me it would take about a year to get sorted fully. I didn't believe them, but they were right. Here's the paragraph that best encapsulates my hard won wisdom:

So, the people who told me it takes a year were about right. It’s really only in the last couple of months that I’ve felt I’ve gained some kind of toehold, and even that’s still pretty tenuous. I have a theory about why it takes as long as it does – New York is kind of like a big chamber, with lots of particles flying about, winking in and out of existence. There are three kinds of particles: employed people, unemployed people, and vacant jobs. As they whizz about, random connections are made and broken; unemployed people connect with employed people, and employed people connect with vacant jobs. A chain has to be forged between an unemployed person and a job that suits them, but it all moves so fast that this actually happens pretty rarely. Sometimes a link is made, but the job is short term, or doesn’t pay enough, or it’s just a bad match. All you can do is keep meeting people, as many as possible, and stay in touch with them, and hope that a good connection is made before it’s too late. And it generally takes about a year for this to happen. Statistics and probability.

Of course, I'm not really qualified to do anything so my situation is pretty different. This is probably quite useless to you. I apologise.

chrisc

Do you have any contacts over in NY? If I were you, I'd probably check with them to see if they have connections. Or even just pick up a job that doesn't have to do with the QFA until you are able to find one - even if it's a job in service or whatever, in NY you need to have a job if you're living in the city. It's sooo expensive otherwise.