In February, CFA Society Toronto’s Mentorship Committee held a reception to celebrate the success of its 2015 mentorship program and to officially kick off its 2016 program. It also hosted two luncheon events, the most recent of which was A Day in the Life of a Director of Global Equities, led by Samir Jhaveri, MBA, CFA, director of global equities at Black Creek Investment Management. The following are Jhaveri’s insights and lessons learned from a career spanning more than 15 years in the investment industry.

Think Like an Investor

The margin for error is very small in terms of becoming a great manager or a poor one. It’s important to know who you are as a person and to be open and honest with yourself in order to understand your style and become aware of the areas where you may make mistakes. Your investing approach needs to align with your mindset and personality. From there, you’ll be able to identify firms where the investment philosophy aligns with your own. This is key to your future success as an investor.

Learning from history and analyzing the results of your past investment decisions allow you to make adjustments to your approach. As an investor, you’re constantly learning new things—from yourself and from others—and leveraging those lessons is an essential part of improving. One way to evaluate your thesis and decision-making is through a 2×2 matrix: Did you get something right or wrong? And did everything play out a certain way for the right or wrong reasons?

If you got something wrong, perhaps your thesis was completely incorrect and you missed the signs along the way and made a mistake. Alternatively, your thesis could have been right, but the market tanked or something else unexpected occurred and you were unlucky. If an investment turned out to be a success, your ideas could have played out exactly the way you expected for the right reasons or you were simply lucky.

Differentiate Yourself and Get There

An important step is to figure out what your goal is—where you want to get to, what you want to do, and why you want to do it—and to recognize that there are many different paths that can lead to one destination. Your first step might not be your ideal destination, but as long as you have a specific idea in mind of what you want to do, each successive experience will take you closer to your end goal.

When evaluating potential candidates, hiring committees don’t always look for specific qualifications or experiences. Sometimes they look for a thought process and a personal philosophy that are aligned with those of the firm. For example, they might value questions such as the following: Are you inquisitive? Do you have global interests? Do you know other languages? Have you done anything in your personal life, such as travelling, that would indicate that you want to see the world and learn about new cultures?

Applications for the 2017 Mentorship Program will be open on August 3, 2016. Please contact mentor@cfatoronto.ca for more information.

What’s in an MBA?

For many people facing the decision to pursue an MBA, the age-old question remains: Is the degree worth it? For Samir Jhaveri, MBA, CFA, director of global equities at Black Creek Investment Management, it was worth it. He studied pharmacology in university but had a great interest in investing in stocks since high school. The MBA program was Jhaveri’s first business school experience and was a personal goal he’d set out to accomplish.

Completing the business degree was valuable because through this experience he discovered his passion for managing capital and, as a result, emerged with an understanding of why he wanted to work in investment management. But after completing the MBA, Jhaveri didn’t look for a job immediately after graduation; instead, he travelled around the world. However, the global experience he gained led to the next major step of his career.

Jhaveri’s path highlights that every situation is different, and each person extracts different benefits from the same experience.