Career conversations: A long-term investment in your future

Graduating in the midst of the financial crisis was an interesting experience. I chose to pursue finance during the financial crisis because I love numbers. And I believe that finance was the best way to fulfill my appetite for numbers.  

Hi, my name is Shahzeb Zakaria and I'm the CEO of Big Byte Insights, a data analytics firm that predicts KPIs of publicly traded companies for US-based institutional investment managers.  

A lot of my friends who were initially recruited for finance, they switched industries and went to work on the West Coast for major tech. However, I persisted because I believed finance was the best industry for me. One of my immediate supervisors at the investment office advised me that if I wanted to work in the fund to fund space, I should strongly consider getting the (CFA)® charterholder.

Typically, you take the exams while you're working full time. It requires sacrificing your evenings and your weekends. Anyone who has earned the (CFA)® charterholder, not only do they know about finance, but they're also hard working and ambitious. If I am hiring someone and have a large stack of resumes, I can use the CFA® charterholder as a great filtering tool and go from a thousand resumes to perhaps 10.  

At the time when I commenced my CFA (Program) journey, I did not intend to switch to tech. Back then, my goal was to work on the buy side. And when I transitioned to my own company from my buy side gig in December 2016, I found that the CFA® designation was an instant stamp of approval.  

There were quite a few tech folks who were trying to sell data to hedge funds. But what made me stand out was my finance background and the CFA® charterholder next to my name. The CFA® charterholder definitely started some conversations that otherwise would not have started.

My advice to young professionals pursuing the CFA® charterholder is that they should view it as a long-term investment. You will sacrifice your evenings, you will sacrifice your weekends. But over the remainder of your professional life, you will bear the fruits of your hard work.