About

There's no doubt that a career in wealth management offers one of the best work / life balances out there. However, when you talk to most senior wealth managers - who have been at it for decades - what they will tell you is that the balance is entirely secondary to how equally rewarding, challenging, and ultimately meaningful they find their work.

Of course, it would make sense that wealth management offers rewarding, challenging, and meaningful work. Wealth management - irrespective of the firm to which you are applying - revolves around taking the ideal life of a client and making it a reality over the course of decades. Through these years close bonds are formed as you are routinely relied upon through both upswings and downswings. 

With all this being said, this idealized picture of wealth management is only ever achieved by a small fraction of those who enter into the industry.

This is because for decades wealth management firms across the spectrum operated on a churn and burn model that saw them hire lots of folks and then fire nearly all of them after a few years. 

Over the past five years or so a philosophical shift has occurred in the industry, however. Interviews have gotten harder as less spots are made available for new entrants to the industry. While this is bad for your chances at initially getting the job, it will be very good if you do.

That's because this new philosophical shift will - hopefully - make it easier for a larger percent of those who break in to be able to get through the difficult first decade where you scrape together your first client, in order to realize decades of success thereafter. 

As interviews have become more structured and difficult there have been no resources that try to shed light on how to prepare for these interviews. Including not only providing common questions and answers, but also discussing the right way to frame your answers in order to be truly impressive in an interview. 

After seeing so many people going into their interviews blind, I wanted to put together a resource that could shed some light on what to expect.

My hope is also that the guide - and the posts you'll find on this site - help folks have a better contextual understanding of what is important and what isn't important in wealth management (at least from my perspective!). 

When I first created the guide - over a year ago - and sent it around to some folks who asked for common interview questions, I was shocked to hear how helpful people found it. 

Over the past year I've routinely added more relevant questions, broken them down into types, and tried to create answers or questions that are comprehensive, while being practical to use in an interview setting. 

I hope you find everything on this site as helpful as others have. I'm always happy to hear from folks if they have any questions (although at times I do get busy, so my responses can sometimes be a bit delayed).

Also, remember: if you end up finding what I've written on this site and in the guide to be helpful in landing a position within wealth management, please let me know! It always makes my day to hear.