FinPod

Meeyeon (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of What's New at CFI, the podcast series where we talk about the newness and goodness at CFI. And today we're talking about another major tool that we've launched, and it's the CFI job board And to talk about this exciting new feature, I've got two special guests with me today. You usually only have one, but today I have two, Seb and Stephen. So you have likely met both of these people before.

You might know Seb as an instructor of our BIDA courses, but currently he's doing a lot behind the scenes as a VP of strategic products, bringing you new products like this. And Stephen is our CFI community manager. And if you're an active member of CFI, chances are he's helped you in some way, shape or form ⁓ with along your CFI journey, whether it be answering questions with regards to courses or something like this. So.

Career outcomes are obviously a big motivator for CFI members. So we're super excited to have this out now and let's talk a little bit more about

so let's talk about the job board, but also career resources broadly because I mean,

We of course we have all of our courses, we have our website, we have tons of resources there, but it is a large space and sometimes we need a little bit more direction or reminders on where we can find things. ⁓ So I guess the big opening question is why did CFI decide to take this step and step into having a job board?

Sebastian Taylor (01:32)
Well, what we've learnt from speaking to our learners is that...

beyond learning new skills and getting certifications, what they're really interested in is career outcomes and progress in their career, whether that means getting that pay rise, getting a promotion, getting a new job or finding their first job in the industry. so careers really is at the core of everything that our learners are doing on the platform. okay, when someone joins the platform, we help guide them into which skills or which certification might be relevant to

them, they go through that learning journey and so this really represents the natural end point to the learning journeys. You've got your new skills, what resources can we offer you to help you progress in that career and in the way that you want. And so Jobs Board really is the latest feature that we've launched in BIDA and to help people find jobs in the relevant industry.

Meeyeon (02:31)
And

this might be an obvious question, but of course there's things, you know, like indeed.com and actually don't really know any other job boards. LinkedIn is one, but how is, like how is are CFI job board different than any of those?

Sebastian Taylor (02:47)
Well, we're just hoping to bring as many of those finance roles into one place as possible. we are partnered with Indeed and eFinancial Careers to bring those jobs feeds into one place. so we're hoping to work with further partners in future to bring everything into one jobs board

Meeyeon (03:09)
So it probably goes without saying, but our CFI job board is in partnership with larger engines such as e-financial careers, Indeed, LinkedIn, but it is a much more curated version. So whatever brings you to CFI, whether you're interested in a career path associated with the FMVA CMSA, BIDA,

Those are the types of jobs that you're going to see on our job board. So you're not going to see manufacturing, you're not going to see marketing roles, you're going to see something that is relevant to our programs and the ones that you complete.

Sebastian Taylor (03:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned relevance to our programs as well. That's something we're interested to know through feedback from learners is...

Would it be helpful for learners, for example, to browse available jobs prior to doing their learning so they can better understand, okay, which certification or which specialization would help me land this job? So there's more we can do there in terms of connecting the two worlds of learning and careers and to help people understand the links.

Meeyeon (04:16)
And then

speaking to what ⁓ learners are asking for, Stephen, in terms of our CFI community demand, how often do members ask about career opportunities in community?

Stephen Moerane (04:27)
I think we have almost daily conversations. so within community, actually, we have direct messages and then we have public posts. You can see all of the posts. We've got posts in the career growth space. There are a lot of conversations in there, but then I receive almost messages daily with people asking what roles can I apply for if I've got skills from this program or this is the role I'm targeting. How can I

I customized my resume to better fit this role, questions like that.

Meeyeon (05:04)
And when it comes to careers features, we have so many different resources at CFI. ⁓ The most direct of course, our programs that we have, whether it's our certifications or specializations, all of those are career oriented. ⁓ But the other resources that we have that are not necessarily on your dashboard might be things like our podcasts. So if you're listening right now, you've likely noticed that we also have a series called

Careers in Finance or Member Spotlight. Those are great career resources that help you have like the kind of fly on the wall experience of coffee chats. So for example, ⁓ one that I've recently had was with someone named Eric Byunn Amazing career in finance, ⁓ but also a wide variety of experiences. So very, very helpful to anyone that's exploring careers in finance. We also have ones with...

For example, CEO of Macabacus Charlie Schilling I think that's also a great conversation to listen to, to give, if you are not sure about where you want to go with your career finance, it's always great to be able to talk to people and have these informational interviews, but you don't necessarily have that available at your fingertips because you have to generally know the person to have that person be receptive to a coffee chat. They might also be in a completely different country. So,

Our Careers in Finance podcast series is really trying to bridge that gap for every learner to make sure that regardless of where you might be in your career stage or even geographically, you have equal access to information because information is gonna be the most powerful and transformative thing for your career. Stephen, Seb, I'm just pointing to the resources where I'm a direct face at. ⁓ What about you guys?

to remind our learners of some places that they might be able to navigate to to help with their career.

Sebastian Taylor (07:03)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, within the learning platform itself.

learners will see the careers and roles section on that navigation on the left hand side. And so that's something we've put a lot of effort into in last year. In there you'll find the careers in finance course for example. Now the reason we created that was we know that a subset of our learners come to our platform, they want to work in finance but they're not necessarily sure which role they want to do within the vast world of finance. So that course is a great place to start if you want to understand the industry, understand

how all the roles fit together and what responsibilities each of them have and therefore which learning path you should go down. the career map which mirrors that course exactly to help you understand how these things fit together. Yeah, Stephen, what are your favourite resources?

Stephen Moerane (07:58)
Yeah, I think the career map is one of my favorites because I really like the way that it breaks down courses. Of course, like whether you're in corporate, whether you're investment banking and all of the other fields and finance, it's really, really helpful. It helps you visualize it better and it helps you plan better.

Then we also have interview tips like all over the website so any anyone if anybody goes over and to the website and you type Interview prep you'll find some webinars that we've done in the past regarding interviews and There'll be an interview ebook guide that is really helpful as well

Meeyeon (08:39)
The interview prep series, yours truly hosts that one as well.

And I guess one of the things, the final thing I want to touch on, which Seb already brought up was that if you have an end game, so to speak, in mind, like you have a job title that you are aiming to achieve. I was speaking to a colleague of mine and he works in a different industry, but he's a very successful entrepreneur in software as a service SaaS developer. And one of the things that he says that he finds is that oftentimes he meets developers

that are trying to start a business of their own. have an idea and they start going away, like they're building up that product. They want to have a prototype of it and whatnot. But the thing is from his experience, his experience is as a product manager and his way of approaching being an entrepreneur in the SaaS industry is kind of similar to what we are saying might be a way that learners are approaching their careers, which is

You know, find that monetizable kind of space. So for example, as an entrepreneur in SaaS, you might identify a really niche market that has, you know, clients that want this product. are willing to pay tomorrow. You want to find the clients before you start building the product. Because at the end of the day, if you start coding away and developing the SaaS product, but, and then you're just trying to say like, I think that there's no need for it.

And then you're trying to find clients. There's often a big gap there. Maybe it actually is not as monetizable as you thought. ⁓ When it comes to approaching careers, if you already have that end destination in mind, you could use our job board to see what is accessible to you. Because for example, for me, based in Canada, in Vancouver, I can't necessarily go and work in London tomorrow because I don't have the legal right to work there.

So a great step for our learners might be find those jobs that are available to you, the job postings that are on our job board at CFI, find the ones that are relevant to you, look at what they're looking for, and then kind of reverse engineer that path with our courses and resources, which just happens to rhyme.

Sebastian Taylor (10:55)
What I would add in terms of our careers resources as well is that this is an area we've put a lot of effort into over the last year and we know that there's a lot more features and lot more resources that we can develop.

Meeyeon (10:56)
Okay.

Sebastian Taylor (11:08)
And so the easiest way for us to do that in a way that benefits our community is to get feedback and to speak to as many learners as possible. So if you're listening and you have ideas of what would help you to progress in your career, we would love to hear about them.

Stephen Moerane (11:24)
yeah, and one other resource that I really, really enjoy is, you know, our community has got a wealth of professionals who are in roles that are already, you know, we're training for. And so within the community, you can reach out to anybody who's already in a role that you're aspiring towards or something, or, you know, somebody who might be working towards something that you're eyeing. So I think that that one is also really, really good.

Meeyeon (11:53)
And with that said, I can't think of a better way to close with a podcast. So until next time, we hope to see you again on What's New at CFI.