One of the best things about the Internet from a jobseeker’s perspective is the way in which it has opened up more incredible opportunities than ever before. The kinds of job searches that would once have taken weeks, months or even years to carry out can now be handled in a matter of seconds with a quick web search. Even for those on the lookout for high-flying equity analyst vacancies, the web has become a hotbed of activity where the best posts are listed and the most capable applicants begin making names for themselves.
However, as is the case in all such advanced career areas, there will always be those who believe they’re making all the right moves and still come back with nothing but one failure after another. It’s of course not the kind of career path that anyone expects to be easy and nor is it realistic to expect to dive straight into an amazing job fresh from completion of studies, but when the months or years are rolling by and still nobody’s biting, it’s hard not to lose motivation.
The good news however is that more often than not, when and where a person has the drive, dedication and indeed the skills required to succeed, the problem tends to lie more with their approach than with themselves as a person/applicant. In the case of the equity research analyst, there are plenty of common mistakes that can and do hold applicants back from the jobs of their dreams – most of which are surprisingly easy to fall into.
So, if you’re among the masses beginning to lose hope in things and generally feeling jaded by the endless raft of rejections, here’s a quick overview of just a few of the common mistakes you might be making:
1 – Expecting Too Much
First and foremost, the most common mistake of all in the recruitment process tends to be that of trying to fly before you’ve even had any experience walking or crawling. When looking for these kinds of jobs online, it can be so tempting to make a beeline for those promising six and seven-figure salaries and all the perks in the world – why would you sell yourself short with anything less? Sadly, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that when it comes to posts that are anything but entry-level, chances are there will be a small army of other applicants out there with infinitely more experience and more to offer than you. You therefore need to be realistic about your current position and understand that a ‘foot in the door’ is vastly more valuable to you than another raft of rejection letters.
2 – Reliance on Qualifications
Still on the same subject, something else to take on board is the fact that while qualifications are important, they are far from the be all and end all in the eyes of employers. The reason being that while technically anyone can study long and hard enough to gain an on-paper qualification, this doesn’t in any way mean that what they’ve learned will translate into anything useful in a real-world setting. As such, qualifications tend to serve more as ‘boxes to tick’ in the eyes of employers, who are far more interested in you – as in who you are, what you do, why you do it and what you have done. If you make your applications far too much about your qualifications alone, chances are you won’t get very far at all.
3 – Poor Use of Time
This is a perfect illustration of a career area when blank spaces on your CV will do nothing but drag your chances of success right down into the gutter. The reason being that there’s always something of value and relevance you could be doing with your time, so there’s really no excuse for sitting around and just waiting for something to happen. If you can’t (honestly) say that the time you’ve had while seeking a post has been used proactively and productively, they’ll have trouble taking you seriously.
4 – Looking in the Wrong Places
There are so many great websites these days that are dedicated exclusively to this kind of work, there’s really very little to gain from targeting your efforts elsewhere. These are where the employers go to post their vacancies, therefore should be where you go to look for them.
5 – Not Knowing What You Want
Last but not least, if you haven’t established in your own mind exactly what you want and how you intend to get it, this will come across in every application and wreck your chances.