Hi Ruthy,

My advice is that you have to make your enthusiasm for this work much more tangible. You need to be creating research reports about a company each and every month to demonstrate your competency at being a research analyst.

When I was looking for work as a research analyst I did not base my research on a sell-side research report and I did not have access to Bloomberg either. Primary data sources are free and available on the Internet. For example, here in the US the Securities and Exchange Commission requires all US publicly traded companies to make their annual reports available. In turn, the SEC makes these freely available on their website. As a professional I never used anything other than primary data; so no sell-side reports were used. I occasionally used Bloomberg for things like yield curve data to help build costs of capital. But now that same information is available on Yahoo! Finance.

If you engage in the above process, you not only make your skills tangible to a prospective employer, you also will make yourself a better investor. You will learn more how to see the world in such a way as to take advantage of your innate abilities and your skill set.

The process described above can take a very long time. I have a friend who engaged in this very same process for three years before landing his first job as an analyst. When I began my quest I was a lower level employee than you are now - I was a customer service representative - and I had fewer credentials.

My next piece of advice is to ask your previous employer - the renewables firm - what you could have done to better demonstrate your ability. If they simply reply "have more experience" then investing for your own personal account and making your investment track record available to them should eliminate those sorts of questions going forward.

Best wishes for success!

Jason