FlightWay / Careers / Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents

Business & Finance

Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents

Buy and sell securities or commodities in investment and trading firms, or provide financial services to businesses and individuals.

Sector: Business & Finance
Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
O*NET code: 41-3031.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Working with Computers

central to the job — rated 86/100 for importance.
Getting Information

a major part of the work — rated 82/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
Processing Information

a major part of the work — rated 77/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

a major part of the work — rated 77/100 for importance.
Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge

a major part of the work — rated 75/100 for importance.

Buy and sell securities or commodities in investment and trading firms, or provide financial services to businesses and individuals. May advise customers about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, commodities, and market conditions.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Monitoring

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
Judgment and Decision Making

Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
Active Learning

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 63/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Customer and Personal Service

Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 83/100 for importance.
Economics and Accounting

Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 73/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a solid working level (56/100), and rated 71/100 for importance.
Mathematics

Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 68/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Deductive Reasoning

Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A four-year bachelor's degree is the usual entry ticket.

Experience

Two to four years of related work, internships or research on top of the degree.

Training

Most of the learning happens before you are hired, not after.

What it pays

These are typical business compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Fortune 100 Corp Track

$130k – $300k

Mid-size Companies

$80k – $135k

SMBs & Local Biz

$55k – $90k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.