Career Development

We asked readers a personal question: What was the primary reason you pursued a career in finance? For most respondents, the answer has a lot more to do with interest and chance and a lot less to do with money or prestige.

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield spent years training for space exploration. His lessons about the value of prepraration, the power of negative thinking, and working as a team are just as relevant on Earth as they are in outer space.

A frequent question we receive at CFA Institute is, "What can I do to improve my chances of getting hired as a research analyst?" Beyond the obvious — become a CFA charterholder — there are a number of other steps that aspiring analysts may take in my opinion.

As professionals, our careers tend to be a high priority in our lives. Various factors shape our careers, but which one is the most important? When we asked this question in our reader survey this week, we received 1,136 responses, indicating that there is no single dominant factor.

Robert F. Bruner, Dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, discusses the evolution of the MBA program. Dean Bruner focuses on the changing perspectives of students towards education and employment, while explaining what recruiters and employers can come to expect out of MBA graduates in the 21st century that may not have been the case in the past.

Heather Packard rounds up her favorite articles from 2012 on soft skills and career development.

Sarah Dudney explains why having a mentor can benefit one’s professional career, describes how to go about finding a mentor, and discusses deriving maximum benefit from the mentor-mentee relationship.

Solid technical skills are obviously a prerequisite in terms of getting a job interview and even progressing from one role to the next throughout your career, but “soft” skills are becoming an increasingly important criteria for determining which candidate actually lands the job and what advancement opportunities will be available.