Hello Moody,

You are so welcome for the article. I made a vow years ago that I would try and help as many passionate people as possible help attain their dream jobs in finance. There are shockingly few resources available other than alumni networks. My personal website that contained my research from ages ago has not been LIVE for many, many years. I am afraid that the content is also dead. The versions of those old Excel files are soooooo old as to be unopenable by current versions of Excel, or even specialty programs that allow you to open old versions of Excel. My research reports looked identical to those you would find issued by a major brokerage firm. I created a worksheet within my analysis workbook that was tailored to look like a research report. I stacked the pages so that when it printed it looked like a 5 page research report.

I think that a "cold-call" reach out on LinkedIn is probably not such a good idea. You really want to have a minimal personal connection to the person before you ask them to mentor you. One way around that is to ask questions of CFA charterholders on LinkedIn. A good example is, "Hey, I am very interested in attaining a position similar to yours in finance, would you mind answering a few questions for me?" Start there. If that works and a good relationship develops then I would say ask them to be a mentor.

Yours, in service, and best wishes for success!

Jason