MBA v CFA

  • 17 Sep 2010 at 10:51 AM
  • MBAs

Degree From Harvard Business School Hot New Accessory For Budding Fashionistas

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Time was, the MBA candidates at Harvard were by and large white boys of debatable attractiveness looking for a cushy gig at Goldman upon graduation. Those guys are still there. But know who else is too? Chicks! Good looking ones! Who don’t give a rat’s ass about working on Wall Street. What praytell are they doing at HBS? Looking to get a leg up in the fashion world. For example, former model Olga Vidisheva. This her story.

…the 25-year-old Russian model with piercing green eyes and a 24-inch waist, struts into class, her fellow students at Harvard Business School snap up from their laptops. The 5-foot-8 stunner, who loves labels like Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, stands out in a sea of crew-cut, khaki-wearing nerds. After graduating from Wellesley in 2007, the beauty from Moscow logged two grueling years working at Goldman Sachs. “I really gave it a shot,” she sighs. Upon realizing that finance wasn’t for her, she enrolled at HBS for an unlikely reason—to get a leg up in the fashion world. She spent this past summer in a coveted internship with Chanel’s marketing department in New York and hopes to score a plum job in fashion after graduating in 2011.

And Olga’s not just some sort of freak accident. Apparently there are lots of Olga’s running around campus. Read more »

  • 14 Sep 2010 at 12:45 PM
  • MBAs

Laid Off Wall Streeter Finds Self In Unemployment

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Ryan Payne is a former investment banker who was laid off from his job at the Jordan Edmiston Group in April 2008 and has since remained unemployed. In the beginning, he sent out dozens of resumes and “would’ve done anything” to get his job back, which is ironic given how much he hated it when he had it, particularly the long hours and lack of a social life that resulted in him sleeping under his desk on his birthday in 2007. With over $100,000 in student loans and consumer debt, the Payne, who holds his JD/MBA, moved home and things were pretty dark for a while. “At one point, if I’d had a gun, I wouldn’t be talking to you now,” he told the LA Times. Then one day Payne said fuck this, pulled himself “out of the job orbit” and has never looked back. Read more »

  • 07 Sep 2010 at 12:21 PM
  • MBAs

Lady Hedge Fund Manager/CFA Charterholder Sara Grillo Mentors Young Women Looking To Succeed In Business, Love

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Sara Grillo is a manager with hedge fund advisor Diamond Oak Capital Advisors and the topic of a recent Bloomberg article. What about Grillo intrigued editors enough to profile her? Without having spoken to anyone over there an educated guess would have to be her ability to overcome obstacles and in doing so, set examples for females trying to break into a male-dominated field. Obstacles such as:

1) Unemployment

Work in a bar. That was a friend’s suggestion for Harvard graduate Sara Grillo after she was laid off from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008. Two years later, the hedge-fund analyst is campaigning to get more women into top financial jobs. Grillo, 32, who co-manages hedge fund advisor Diamond Oak Capital Advisors LLC, found herself among 225,000 unemployed finance workers that year as the subprime market collapsed. “If I were a tall, broad shouldered, gray-haired, 50-year- old man with the same credentials, nobody would have suggested I take a job for less than one eighth of my salary,” said Grillo in a telephone interview from her home in Queens, New York City.

2) The fail rate of the venerable CFA exams

Dismayed by friends’ suggestions that she quit finance, Grillo vowed to help more women join the industry, setting a goal of raising the proportion of women Chartered Financial Analysts to 50 percent from the current 19 percent. “I’m a CFA charterholder and I always look women right in the face and tell them that if I did it, they can do it as well…I wanted those letters after my name so badly,” she said. “If it took me 80 years, it was going to say, ‘Sara Grillo, CFA’ on my tombstone.”

3) Cheapskate boyfriends who apparently deserve to be called out in publications read by millions of people. Read more »

  • 25 Aug 2010 at 10:45 AM
  • MBAs

Booth School Of Business Working Hard To Prove Students Get Out Once In A While, Are Socially Adept Enough To Speak With One Another

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The University of Chicago’s new business school building, designed by Rafael Vinoly who was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1910 Robie House across the street, is oriented around a six-story, glass-and-steel atrium that acts as the school’s “living room.” The social space has helped change the view that the business school is a haven for math geeks and social misfits, said Stacey Kole, a deputy dean. “We’re working hard to break that perception,” Kole said. “When you come to campus, you see more activity. It’s a much more positive place to be.” [Bloomberg]

  • 24 Aug 2010 at 4:30 PM
  • MBAs

Tools Of The Trade: How Flashing Some Blue Steel Can Land You A Gig

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In this tough job market, from time to to time, as we stumble upon them, we like to offer up Do’s and Don’ts for those seeking new gigs. Little pearls of accumulated wisdom picked up in the field. The case study of Jeffrey Chiang, for example, would be a Don’t for those of you looking to improve your situation, professionally speaking. Today we have a Do, courtesy of a pioneering young fellow seeking an opportunity at a private equity firm. And it’s simply this: include head/action shots with your cover letter. Though it’s yet to catch on in fields other than the erotic service industry, including head/action shots can really give you a leg up on the competition. This guy include a head shot and and two (2) action shots of him scaling the Himalays and sailing a boat, which demonstrated a) panache b) that he has interests c) he’s perfected the The Bieber and d) a jaw line that could cut glass. He graduated from college at the age of 20, interned at Merrill Lynch and is currently studying for the Level 1 CFA but who cares about that? It’s the photos that got him in the door. And, as we’ve been informed by the firm at which he’s seeking employment, the pics were apparently impressive enough to allow the potential job-granter to overlook that fact that he “included a link to his ‘work product,’ which seems to be a jacked Wall Street Prep LBO model solution he posted as his completed model,” and he’s been granted an interview. Something for you all to think about. Read more »

  • 19 Aug 2010 at 12:00 PM
  • MBAs

“Young, Ambitious, Female MBA Student” Is Deadly Serious About Soliciting Investment Banking Gig Via Casual Encounters

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As I’m sure you don’t need to be told, times are pretty tough right now for those seeking new jobs (or a job, period) on Wall Street. Some have taken the all out begging, stand on a street corner holding wearing a sandwich board approach. Others are going with the traditional route (networking, sending out resumes, hitting up any who’s ever given them a business card). Neither are yielding much in the way of results. And while it might seem counterintuitive, for a person with zero prospects to initiate talks with a potential employer by straight up demanding a job and refusing to even interview for it, maybe it’s something you ought to consider, in addition to taking various other pages from this chick‘s playabook. Read more »

  • 18 Aug 2010 at 9:30 AM
  • MBAs

Financial Services Rep Not Aware Putting His DNA In Co-Worker’s Water Was Something His Office Frowned Upon

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These days, if you work on Wall Street and want to let people know that underneath that button down shirt and black pants beats the heart of an absolute freak, you’ve got to step up your game. If you’re going to get your name out there, it’s not enough to simply sexually assault a female colleague– you’ve got to manhandle her breasts with your feet. It’s not enough to sodomize an underling, you’ve also got to piss in his mouth. And if you’re going to “release an offensive material in a public space”– in this case, the material your semen– that space must be your co-worker’s water bottle. Twice. Michael Kevin Lallana knows what we’re talking about. Read more »

Let’s Talk About: CFA (Level 3) Results

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Forty-six percent of you are likely feeling prettay prettay prettay good this morning, possibly on account of celebratory morning drinks. The rest of you are probably in not as great a place, on account of having just thrown away the last 4-6 months of your lives. Read more »

  • 09 Aug 2010 at 11:25 AM
  • MBAs

Hedge Fund Manager Richard Perry Also Gifted Party Planner

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Things have been going prettay prettay prettay well for Richard Perry these last six months. His fund, Perry Capital, is up nine percent year to date, his beastly neighbors have quit bitching about the fact that he was burning their eyes out, and this past weekend, his daughter got married to a HBS grad who could potentially take over the family business one day (the SIL is an analyst at the Baupost Group). And speaking of the nuptials! Richie can be credited with not only making sure the celebration had the puffiest shrimp money could buy and a cake that was to die for but delightful ambiance and riveting entertainment for his guests as well. Read more »

  • 26 Jul 2010 at 1:48 PM
  • MBAs

Two Dudes Prove Why It’s Best To Argue CFA v. MBA Anonymously Online And Not In Person At Your Favorite Burrito Joint

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NO NO NO A CFA IS BETTER! (Throws chair.) Read more »

Let’s Talk About: CFA Results

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Are you among the 42 and 39 percent, respectively, relieved? What will you be doing to celebrate? Running out and buying the next level of books during lunch? Not as lucky? Feeling like you just threw away the last four to six months of your life? Want to get angry? Want to make someone pay? Wanna see the institutes denial of your quest to put their precious three letters next to your name with three letters of your own? Read more »