An Editorial Opinion It’s easy to see why people who are angry with the current dismal economic state of the country so often mistakenly place the blame for this situation on Wall Street. After all, hasn’t it become the national symbol for greed, wealth and corruption? It kind of reminds me of the antiwar movement of the 1970s, when protesters would turn their misplaced anger on returning Vietnam Vets instead of... Read more

Editor's note: The following comes from a job candidate in Australia but could easily apply here as well. For the vast majority of us, job hunting is never easy. In my opinion, candidates (myself included) often make a crucial mistake: We try one method of searching and wait for it to fail before trying another one. My main focus here is to show how different job hunting methods can work... Read more

It’s been 10 years since the planes came in and changed the landscape of lower Manhattan forever; 10 years since two commercial passenger airliners were turned into weapons of mass destruction by a small army of terrorists and flown into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. That attack on September 11, 2001 achieved what a truck bomb had failed to accomplish eight years earlier: the destruction... Read more

{Editor's Note: This Guest Comment comes from London, but applies here as well} Only a few things are certain in life: death, taxes, and the fact that sending your resume to someone on a speculative basis will almost always get the same instinctive response – hitting delete. The fact is, that by punting your resume around, you’ve just done the cyber-equivalent to knocking on someone’s front door with a clipboard and... Read more

I’m a junior working on the buyside in London. I’ve got no major commitments here: I'm in my mid-twenties and rent rather than own a property. It feels like the ideal time to work abroad for a few years. It’s something I've always wanted to do as I didn't have a gap year before starting work. Sydney really appeals due to the climate and the outdoor lifestyle, rather than the... Read more

“Mother Theresa doesn’t work on Wall Street.” I recently read this quote. Since moving to a larger city at the start of the year, 2010 has been a mixed bag, both personally and professionally. I got offered my supposed “dream job” supporting the front office at one of the Big Four banks, only to have it cruelly taken away by a ruthless business-unit manager and an inept recruitment agency. I spent... Read more

As the financial job market gradually recovers, it's reversing the old saw that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours. Instead, the sequence I've seen play out over the past year goes like this: A tentative recovery is when your friend's friend gets hired. A fragile recovery is when your friend gets hired. And a sustainable recovery is when you... Read more

Do you feel guilty for performing a role that might otherwise go to someone younger than you? If you're reading eFinancialCareers News, you'll almost certainly say "no." But your answer won't sit well with some opinion leaders. In her final column in Newsweek in May 2009, famed essayist Anna Quindlen wrote that baby boomers (the generation born between 1946 and 1964) "have created a kind of bottleneck, in the work world, in... Read more

In 2009, banks’ massively lowered their compensation ratios. However, in the past quarter, compensation as a proportion of revenues rose again. This is fortunate, given a) the sorry state of 2010 revenues and b) the fact that several banks have (mistakenly) decided to increase their headcount. At Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (institutional securities), JPMorgan (investment bank), Credit Suisse (investment bank) and Deutsche (corporate banking and securities), top line revenues fell anything... Read more

A fascinating struggle that could ultimately redefine career paths for public pension fund investment professionals across the U.S. is playing out in San Diego. Tired of losing key staffers to the private sector and seeing desks sit vacant because of legislated caps on what county employees may earn, the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association is trying a different tack. On Thursday it asked its board of trustees for permission to... Read more

A contact in transition told me that a recruiter, upon learning his last salary, replied, "Wow, you were pretty well paid." Problem is, my friend insists he was substantially underpaid compared with his peers. "I meet people on a regular basis who are exactly at the same mental and educational level who make twice as much. The difference is that they have been given opportunities that I haven't," he explained. His... Read more

Two unrelated major events late last week could significantly affect Wall Street career prospects. A sharp downturn in trading volume that depressed banks' profits last quarter is a potential downer for jobs later in 2010. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs's settlement of civil fraud charges with the SEC is a potential positive influence. Poor second-quarter results from JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup reflect a broad trend: trading volume... Read more

Making it through the job-search maze requires a finely crafted story and image. Besides recognizing and compellingly addressing a prospective employer's concrete business needs, a successful candidate must also address hidden requirements embedded in every screening and interview process. Some financial professionals who've been out of work for a long time may be compounding their difficulty by overlooking one such requirement: A viable resume must show a current, or at least... Read more

The best way for finance pros to manage their mid-life career problems is to view their talents as valuable assets that throw off income each year, reasons career coach Alan Kearns. Like other assets, he says, your talents can be managed in a way that produces more with time. On its company blog, Kearn's Toronto-based firm CareerJoy cites statistics from Age Wave and the Concours Group showing that folks aged 35... Read more

Traders and dealmakers, move over. From a career standpoint, now it's corporate's turn to shine. I don't mean the financial reform package completed early Friday will dethrone the front-office kingpins of profitability and compensation that brought Wall Street to the brink of choking on its own past success. But the law's passage will shift the trend of near-term hiring and influence within financial institutions away from rock-star-like producers and toward the... Read more

Interview questions can frustrate the most capable candidate: You factually answer the interviewer's questions, you tout your job skills and talents... and then don't get the job. Are those hiring managers not getting how fabulous you are and how well you will do for the company? If your answers to interview questions don't tell a story, the hiring manager will most likely not remember you as well as those who tell... Read more

Last month, around the time the series finale of Lost aired on ABC, someone posted on a business networking site an analysis of that entire multi-year story line as a parable about leadership and management succession. That got me thinking about which other pop culture products convey messages – even actionable lessons, perhaps – about career management. This is the time of year when people publish lists of best books for... Read more

A running debate I've been having with a good friend goes something like this. He'll email me about a friend of his (or two or three) who just landed a well-matched job through an online posting. I'll reply with equal-and-opposite anecdotes about acquaintances who networked their way to opportunities that were otherwise closed to them. I'll go on to cite the well-worn statistic that most job openings are filled through networking.... Read more

Resume results, accomplishments, deliverables - pundits tell you that you must have these on your resume in order to get noticed. But what, exactly, IS an accomplishment you can put on a resume anyway? How do you go about constructing it for your resume? Let's start with a definition: an accomplishment is a work effort you completed that moved the business forward, shown through numbers. If you look at that definition... Read more

If you're looking to benefit from Wall Street's current robust job market, take care not to stumble into the "overqualified" pit. Too much of a good thing is wonderful, said Mae West. But that's not how hiring managers see it. Relevant work experience, advanced degrees and credentials - while prerequisites for many finance jobs - can disqualify as well as qualify. If a candidate previously held a role at a higher... Read more