People who pass qualifications tend to ask for raises and to look for promotions. He knows that you’re trying to get it in order to further your own career ambitions, and that those career ambitions might not include continuing to do what you’re told for him. What’s much more common is the situation where someone no-shows because they are aware there is no point in sitting the test, because their initial estimates of how much studying they were going to be able to do have turned out to be hopelessly over optimistic.Īnd what’s the root cause of that? Well…sometimes there’s a reasonable excuse, workload is unpredictable, but it’s also often the case that the promised study leave turned out not to be given because the boss fundamentally doesn’t want you to get that CFA qualification. But those circumstances are comparatively rare.

There’s not much that can be done if you’re unlucky enough to suddenly hit the crunch period of a billion-dollar deal on the day when you were meant to be sitting the exam. The CFA Institute encourages employers to “support their employees on their CFA journey”, and that support is the crucial issue. The qualification is described as “a marathon, not a sprint”, but to many candidates, it feels more like training for an Iron Man triathlon while also holding down a day job running marathons in lead diving boots. The CFA is a qualification which is typically taken by early-career employees in markets and investment banking jobs, and these are some of the most time squeezed people there are.

And although the institute does its best to get that number down, it’s unlikely to succeed, because the reason for a lot of these no-shows is actually quite sinister.īecause although the institute can give leeway for childcare emergencies and calendar clashes, and do its best to mitigate exam nerves, everyone, including the CFA Institute itself, knows that one of the biggest causes of CFA exam no-shows is work pressure. Although he probably wasn’t talking about the CFA qualification, the CFA Institute might consider including that quote in its brochures, because for the last four years, roughly 20% of candidates registered to take its exams don’t make it to the hall. Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success is just about showing up.

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