Advice needed: switching to IB for FT after SA in AM (passive)
TL;DR: Got into finance/recruiting late. Landed a SA at top index funds issuer but realized that AM is not where I wanna end up. Want to know if I stand a realistic chance at a full-time IB offer given no prior IB experience and whether I stand any chance at going into HF (not necessarily L/S fund) in the future if I stay in passive AM. If I don't land a FT IB gig, does it make sense to go to business school after a few years in AM.
A little background: Junior at non-target with a decent GPA (3.8-3.9). For the first two years of college I was pretty much working towards a career in law/economic policy/date science. While I've always been interested in finance (I've been reading WSJ, watching CNBC and Bloomberg news and maintaining a personal portfolio since I was a freshman), I had never thought about pursuing a career in finance for some reason, probably because 1) my school is known for its SJW culture and there is actual peer pressure to NOT go into finance (you know the typical liberal arts college vibe), and 2) I didn't have a good relationship with my dad and he wanted me to go into finance, so it was almost like I was trying to not do finance on purpose just because I didn't want to be told what to do by him (I know it sounds dumb, but if you grew up with an overbearing father who tries to micromanage your life whenever he could you understand where I come from). On top of that, I guess I was also more interested in the financial economics side of things like I get excited by yield curve, financial derivatives, macro and all that nerdy shit way more than reading 10Ks and building DCF models.
Halfway into the 2nd semester of sophomore year, I suddenly realized that all my previous reservations about a career in finance were irrational and I never should have cared about what other people thought, so I started looking for summer opportunities in March, which was obviously too late to land anything meaningful. (When I started looking for sophomore internships some of my friends were already getting their junior SA offers.) I ended up working at a startup for the summer doing corporate dev stuff while learning IB technicals on the side. I started recruiting for SA in July when I felt comfortable putting my corp dev job on my resume, and I applied to mostly market-related positions (capital market, S&T and some hedge funds that recruited undergrads) because I thought I was more suited towards those rather than IB. The first offer I got was from one of the top index funds issuers (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street), and one day before the offer expired I got a superday invite from a BB (GS, JPM, MS), which I decided to turn down because it was too late to ask for an extension on my offer.
I was happy with the offer at first but after working for a PE shop part-time and talking to alumni working in HF, I realized that AM probably isn't where I want to be and my career progression and choices might be severely limited if I start out doing passive investing. I kinda regret not going the IB route and I'm thinking about recruiting for IB FT. I'm just wondering how likely will investment banks hire someone without prior IB experience, especially given what's going on with corona? I would have the SA and PE internships under my belt by the time I apply for FT and I'm pretty solid on technicals. Also, if my goal is work at a hedge fund (doesn't have to be a L/S fund, I'm probably more interested in other discretionary strategies like global macro, credit, etc.), is IB still the most attractive area to start out in? Do I have absolutely no chance at HF if I stayed in passive AM? Say I don't land a FT offer in IB, would it make sense to keep working in AM for two years, go to business school, and then try to land a job at a HF?
Sorry I didn't mean to make the post this long. I'm genuinely concerned that I'll be stuck and not be able to exit into where I want to be. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
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