Background: Business undergrad with two years of financial audit, no techincal background. Two information systems courses with spotty basics (OOP, DFD, waterfall methodology, JAD)

Transferable skills:

• Documentation of business processes
• Eliciting information from clients
• Communicating with finance side

Goal: Find out where to start testing if business analyst role relevant to corporate finance is right for me.

Why business analysis:

• Bridge between Finance guys and IT guys
• Your opinion is valued
• You add value and are essential to project success
• You are constantly refining how you communicate with other people
• A chance to practice explaining concepts in laymans terms
• Being able to flexibly acquire domain knowledge from users

Questions:

• Are you paid project by project and freelancing because users think your job is done after system implementation, rather than stable full time?

• How stable are working hours? Ever get calls at 3am like they might in programming/sysadmin?

• If I attempt a jump right now, what would my responsibilities look like?

• What job responsibilities should I look for at this point?

• Anyone leave business analysis for something else non-IT related? How were your business analysis skills transferrable in that new role?

• What are the most monotonous and repetitive parts of your job and how much of your day does that take up, say 30%?

• Any resources you suggest I look at or work through (signed up for Bridging the Gap) to test if it's a good fit?

• How do you keep your knowhow current? Is BABOK for business analysts like the CPA Handbook is for accountants?

• Am I too early to break into this field if I want a shot at being taken seriously? Heard usually transition in happens after 5 years in another domain (sales, investment banking, growing beets etc.)

• Is there structure for transition into this field like there is for accountants (BBA -> Big 4 recruiting -> fail and go to small firm -> controller after 5-7 years in audit)?

Thanks in advance.