Ask HN: How to credibly demonstrate self-taught skills/knowledge? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to credibly demonstrate self-taught skills/knowledge?

67 pointsjvillal28 comments

HN - first post here.

I've read a lot of posts here about a Do It Yourself MBA or (more recently) teaching yourself Financial Engineering. While the real prize is the knowledge itself, how do you credibly demonstrate this self-taught knowledge/skill to potential employers? I don't imagine that I can just put it on my resume and have an employer believe me.

For some professions, like programming, simply working on a project or two would suffice. There exists ample opportunity for signaling. Perhaps there's some analogue for an MBA or MFE?

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I don't quite see the appeal of "Do It Yourself" strategy. Most people in top MBA or MFE programs are also "doing it themselves" on the side but have many more resources to draw upon.

If you know for certain you want to be in business or finance, why not simply attend a top school. It only takes two years, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. You'll make great friends, expand your network tremendously, and learn a lot, particularly if you go in with a very clear idea of what you want.

Of course, there is a downside -- tuition and opportunity cost. But it doesn't sound like your opportunity cost is that high and tuition, while expensive, is often worth it. I know plenty of people who were earning $40k pre-MBA and $160K after. They are also doing much more interesting work. It's absolutely essential, however, that you know exactly what type of job you want and what is required to get it. If you want to go to McKinsey, you essentially need to attend a top five school. Schools are definitely not worth it if you fritter away your time or decide you don't like the career path you've chosen.

Unfortunately, my GPA got hit pretty hard in college because of some choices I made (attempted to double major in fairly difficult fields). While I'm certainly confident in my ability to score well on the GMAT/GRE and perhaps generate a couple of interesting items on my resume, I fear that my GPA would be enough to keep me from getting in. So, this is my way of asking how to get accredited without going to an accredited school.

You have two options: try to get accredited enough to get hired directly or try to get accredited enough to get into a feeder program. I suspect that the latter is easier. Many good schools will give you a chance if you signal you have your act together (i.e., by scoring well, getting good letters, have some interesting experience, and maybe getting a few As at some local University). I really depends on the exact job you are trying to obtain though. MFE is very different than an MBA.

Also remember to be patient. You may need to apply multiple times, for instance, or spend a year at a local university taking course work to prove you are capable. But don't forget that 40-65 is a 25 year career, optimize that.

DIY MFE: pretty easy, have a 12 month track record on Interactive Brokers.

DIY MBA: most jobs are through referrals, so this is pretty hard. A blog could help, but you could also look like a dilettante if you don't have a track record. The only way to get into, say, McKinsey is through referrals or formal on-campus interviewing.

So lets say I go on IB, make a kickass ROI after 12 months, and decide I want to be gainfully employed in that industry. Do I just put it on my resume? Do I write a blog talking about my success? Or, at the end of the day, will I need people to still vouch for me?

For the DIY MBA, I completely agree. No easy way to signal that you have the requisite skills yourself.

Here is how I did it:

So in school I majored in poli-sci but taught myself finance/accounting/investing by going to the library and reading books.

When I graduated from college (about a year ago) my ultimate goal was to land a job at a hedge fund. But it was pretty tough because hedge fund jobs are hard to land right out of school. Academically I was unimpressive, and I went to a state school.

Along the way (starting when I was a jr in college) I ran an investment blog where I posted ideas and commentary. I really pushed to put up original content and try to build myself into a brand for my niche in investing. This worked out well - After about a year of doing it I managed to get posts linked to by the NYT Dealbook, WSJ and FT blogs.

The blog helped in two ways. I was able to make a lot of contacts with people who were already in the field, and then with those contacts I was able to come to them for advice. So I would send then investment write ups I was working on to get their take on how to improve my process and make my process more professional. In turn, they shared a lot of professional resources with me. The other way is that it just helped get my name out there, people would use google, find my posts, and e-mail me. I tried to be really approachable to my readers, I was always willing to chat with them on the phone.

Once I got my investment process down, I applied to two investment clubs that are pretty tough to get into -- it is entirely based on an investment idea you submit in your application. I got into both which was really helpful in conveying my investment analysis skills.

Then, I took an unpaid internship with a small fund manager in my home town (I live in the south) who I admired. I got a meeting with him by sending a package to his house with a couple of investment ideas and a letter which described why I wanted to work for him. This was a pretty hands off internship, but it helped again in allowing me to get the criticism I needed to improve. He would assign me a company/industry to look at and in 2 weeks we would meet up and discuss my work for a few hours. I did this for 6 months.

Eventually, I started getting e-mails from people wanting to interview me for jobs. I don't know what quite happened, but something clicked. I never advertised that I was looking for a job, but on my blog I did say that I recently graduated from my university.

In the summer, a portfolio manager at a fund that I never dreamed of being able to work for (most of their employees come straight from Ivy League schools with plenty of work experience, the firm's founder is pretty legendary and widely read) reached out to me to talk. I thought it was just a networking call, but at the end of our conversation he made the offer to fly me out for interviews.

I flew out twice and managed to do well in both rounds. So now I am here in a place that gets a lot of snow, working for a fund that I absolutely love.

When I look back on it I think the keys were really figuring out a way to stand out from the crowd (my blog) and then reaching out to professionals in the field to help bridge the gap from what I learned by reading books and what they learned from their jobs. I had a lot of luck in meeting good helpful people that were much more intelligent than me.

This is a very inspiring story. Thanks for sharing.

Would you mind writing a blog post explaining how you got started? You mentioned you went to the library and read books. Which books? Which ones did you start with? What knowledge did you have going in and what are some of the basics that you had to learn and then where did you go from there?

I do value investing, to learn that you really have to read a combination of theoretical (books about value investing) and practical (accounting, finance, investment valuation, excel modeling, books about different industries).

After that you need to put the two together and start valuing businesses. If you keep at it eventually you will pick up the right skills. Most people just read about the theory and dont focus enough on the practical stuff. Their analyses tend to be sub-par and unprofessional.

I spent a lot of time reverse engineering old investments by famous people or recent investments by hedge funds.

There was never one book that helped. I read a ton and tried to pick the best ideas from all of them. At school I regularly had about 10-12 books checked out in my name and would jump around, reading what really interested me.

The other day the founder of our fund took me out to lunch, he mentioned that he thinks Keynes offers the best introduction to the theory aspect of investing in Chapter 12 of his book General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. You can read about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

I'm pursuing this strategy, except on the financial engineering side.

I started taking upper level coursework at a quant finance program and after a semester quickly realized a few things:

1. learning the material thoroughly wasn't inline with getting an A. And if you don't have the grades, employers won't care about what you know, making your degree useless.

2. the real value of the degree (and what you're paying for) is the credentialing. Not the knowledge or skillset, at least for me. There is no magic or 'secret sauce' that was being transfered from professor to student. Everything could be learned from the textbooks, scientific papers, and doing your own research. An MFE degree is basically a degree in linear algebra and stochastic calculus, sprinkled with financial applications.

3. Another aspect of the futility of an MFE degree is most employers don't care what degree it is, as long as its an advance degree in a hard science discipline. In fact, some firms respect an MS/PhD in CS, math, or statistics over MFE's. That says to me that all these advance degrees are merely tools to signal that you can work in a highly quantitative environment.

4. There are a few professors in the MFE program I admired, and I found that they were more than willing to speak with me, even if I was no longer a student. Once I demonstrated enough knowledge, interest, and skill, they were more than willing to open up, and talk to me about my goals, plans, and ideas. A few of the even admitted that some of what they teach had no practical applications in the real world, but must be taught in order to confer the degree.

So with a 4.0GPA, I stop taking classes, and started educating myself independently. I have a nice rapport with a few of the professors I admire (some are very accomplished, academically and professionally), and I've also made a few contacts with professional quants online.

So what I have found is, figure out what is important, and try get very good at that. In investments/quant finance, its building an edge. Many people (including me at one point) think the goal is having a 4.0GPA from a top flight school. I'm sure that helps you get in the game, but thats not what keeps you there.

Its much like VC in a way, if your startup is spitting out money, you won't have trouble attracting investments. And if it isn't, you'll have to convince them with your hoop jumping, educational background, degrees, prior success in different ventures, etc etc.

So your choice is to get profitable ASAP, or to play the game of building hype to garner VC attention. This is exactly how I view building real alpha-generating skills vs. getting an MFE degree.

The other thing thats helped is reaching out to practitioners and academics. It isn't as hard as I once thought, with the caveat that you bring something to the table. For me, I was able to demonstrate I had outpaced the students my professors were teaching. I even recommended a textbook that they became impressed with, and have incorporated it into their program.

If your goal is to be where MBA's are when they graduate, figure out what industry you want to be in, and try to get very skilled in that. If its investments, jakarta's post is really helpful. If its business, nothing says you know business like running one successfully. I definitely think the street vendors in NYC know more about business than my consulting/banking/PE friends.

Realize most of these degrees are signaling. They are a pretty lazy way for firms to do their due diligence when hiring. Of course, there are investment firms that hire specific signal processing and speech recognition experts to do things very specific with their academic backgrounds, but those are the minority. Most just want 'smart' people to 'figure things out'.

Becoming a successful blogger on it? Writing and publishing a book on it? Showing your skills while volunteering for an NGO / organisation that needs/validates your skills? Offering to work for somebody for free for a while? Just some ideas.

(disclaimer, I'm taking the university route myself)

1. Do something wildly impressive.

2. Generate a corpus of quality output that is public and can attract eyeballs.

3. Get someone to believe in you, and use that to launch yourself further.

Exactly my current path. Find a problem, solve, then get people to pay for it. Do that enough times and you're bound to eventually create something very valuable.

You are not alone! Indeed, I think this is a key issue for all of us to address as globalization becomes more and more of a reality and degrees become less credible predictors of competency. Basically, we think we need a sort of reputation system that scales globally as a solution to this problem. Here are the key components we launched:

-CV/Resume display

-Recommendations from trusted others

-Work display (examples that illustrate your capabilities)

-Transcript that highlights courses completed.

-Reputation points (modeled after HN)

We see this as a crucial element to the future of education and believe that it will become significantly more important as education becomes increasingly open and free. We've posted on it here: http://ocwconsortium.org/community/blog/2010/09/15/certifica.... You can also see a demo of our solution here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7LbSnAG-5s

My impression with masters level coursework is that a lot of the benefit comes from the contacts and networking you can do during the process.

I have a friend who worked with blockbuster while he got a degree in journalism. A year after he finished his degree, he was a regional manager with the company, and being primed to move up again. He started small, and demonstrated a natural ability to handle employees, increase productivity, meet and exceed long-term goals, and otherwise improve the situation of anything he touched in the company.

Perhaps, if you really believe in the practical applicability of the mba coursework, you could try to get a lower-level job while you teach yourself the theory and constantly try to apply it to your position in order to demonstrate practical skill? Eventually you still might need the diploma on your wall, but at a certain point you might be able to get your employer to pay for part of it. I'm not sure how common that is, though

Just a few thoughts

I don't know much about Financial Engineering, but most business fields value experience the most, with degrees being a way to get your foot in the door. Startups are much more flexible, and probably provide a better opportunity for someone who's self taught. I don't think you're going to get very far in GE or McKinsey with a Do It Yourself MBA.

If you're trying to get in on the startup scene, launching a business of some sort, even if it fails, will give you experience that other people will probably find valuable. If you've already been through the process of incorporating a business, dealing with lawyers and accountants, handling marketing on a small budget, etc, I'd think you'd be in pretty competitive position.

As a corollary, can anyone list people have been successful without going through the normal establishment method of formal schooling and certification? It seems most of these people saying that education is in a state of revolution and how you can learn from OCW and other online resources instead of from Podunk U or Podunk HS haven't actually taken this path themselves...

Walter Pitts was a renowned self-educated logician and helped create the foundations for Artificial Intelligence. Read his story (he's relatively recent).

Ed Fredkin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin

(Caltech dropout after 1 year, joined the Air Force, became a fighter pilot, got assigned to Lincoln Labs, wrote the first PDP-1 assembler, then became a full professor at MIT).

I'll let you know when I'm done.

So far, as a high school drop-out I've figured out how to code, and I can say the years I have had in the field have given me a competitive edge on my peers. ( in terms of qualifications and hourly rate )

But I'm about as happy as an employee as I was being a student. I can do better for myself.

Still have some things I want to learn. I'm focused now on building my own business. As of late the web has become a great resource to learn about this. Things like the LAN startup movement and the recent surge in interest in the four steps to the epiphany have been wonderful.

I'll let you know how it goes when I'm done.

I think this misses some of the point of the exercise, which isn't necessarily to impress an employer with your excellent resume. There is nothing wrong with building a resume and working a job, but being autodidactic can open doors beyond the typical work-a-job strategy.

Sorry, I suppose I should have clarified this more - I believe that learning is the goal in and of itself. However, when attempting to jump fields there is a very real barriers-to-entry problem caused by a lack of formal accreditation. I'm wondering how people can overcome that.

In many areas, there are exams you can take without needing to do an entire course.

I'd recommend this with a foreign language, or with something else that's easily testable. With an MBA? I second wybo's suggestion of blogging about it, or writing some related articles elsewhere.

The same way you demonstrate knowledge gleaned from an institution, or anywhere, really.

I don't think a framed piece of paper that says "I graduated from The School of Me!" will get anyone anywhere.

Write a book and get solid reviews.

"Become so good they can't ignore you."

etc. etc.

-- Steve Martin.

I wouldn't be able to speak about MFE, but in my experience people with 'real' MBAs respect and admire anyone who has built a successful business of any kind or size. Many times the people doing the hiring at investment banks, money management firms, and management consulting firms look for that in lieu of having the actual degree.

I have a sneaking suspicion that deep down they know the degree itself is kind of bullshit anyway, and want to work with people who actually have run businesses.

The real question is - armed with the equivalent knowledge of an MBA of MFE, why would you want to work for a large firm? That problem is already solved - just go get a Masters.

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