Wall Street Prep Premium Package
Trainees that complete Wall Street Prep’s Premium Package or live seminars, are eligible for Wall Street Prep’s Certification in Financial & Valuation Modeling. Certification is issued only upon passing an online examination (70% is the passing score) which tests the concepts taught in the Premium Package and live seminars.
Why is certification important?
Certification enables trainees to place this credential on their resumes, since simply enrolling in a program does not signal to recruiters that one actually completed the program.
Do recruiters really care?
In a nutshell, some do and some do not. The primary determinants of whether a candidate will get an interview are GPA, reputation of the undergraduate or MBA program, networking prowess, and past work experience. If you do not have those things in place, a certification will not help you.
However, when those other elements are in place, the certification can help “round out” the profile. The reason is that since Wall Street Prep works directly with corporate clients, the certification is a “seal of approval” of sorts that hinge on the reputations of the training providers.
At Wall Street Prep we consistently receive calls from employers to validate certification claims on candidates’ resumes – employers would only do this if the certification mattered. For international students and students that come from a liberal arts background, certification is a highly effective way to demonstrate basic competence in financial concepts and modeling.
Is there a downside?
It should be noted that some have argued that such a credential may potentially be counter-productive because it will expose the trainee to more challenging technical questions. This is a red herring; it is true that the more candidates represent that they know during interviews, the more they will be challenged. But this is not unique to candidates who complete a program like this: A finance major will undoubtedly receive more challenging technical questions than a music major. But stronger resumes are also more likely to lead to an interview in the first place. From our experience, if the candidate is careful about not “overselling” the experience, the advantages of using such a Certification as a credential far outweigh any perceived risk.
