Internship led to full-time job with Merrill team in Boston

Joel Guerrero likes finance, enjoys helping people and believes he has the social skills needed to succeed in financial advice.

This is the first in a series of stories about recent college graduates and their first job in the financial advisory profession.

Joel Guerrero figures he has three skills that will help him become a successful financial adviser. He enjoys finance, he wants to help people, and he likes interacting with the public.

“Becoming a financial adviser is the sum of all three,” he said.

While at Suffolk University in Boston, Mr. Guerrero interned at Hanlon Malone Group, a team of Merrill Lynch advisers, and then worked there part time during his senior year. After graduating in the spring of 2017, he was offered a full-time job.

His current responsibilities for the team include doing retirement analysis on clients or prospects, as well as the marketing and outreach to bring in new clients.

“With retirement analysis, Merrill has a goals-based platform,” he said. “For example, a client may want to work for a couple more years and then spend $100,000 annually after taxes. We work out if that’s possible or not, and what we can do to make it possible.”

His mother, an accountant, was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. She moved to the U.S. so when she had children they would have a better life than she had growing up.

She was an inspiration, Mr. Guerrero said.

“I always felt that she made that sacrifice, and in high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do other than help people,” he said. “I thought about medicine but took economics and discovered I liked finance.”

A part-time job as a bartender during college helped him realize he liked interacting with people, another skill set that will help him in financial advice.