From Wealth Management to Corportate Finance
I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on how to transition from wealth management to corporate finance at a F500?
My background-- I have worked in wealth management (financial advisor for 5 years) and now at a private bank (for a year as a associate portfolio manager) and am about 1 month away from graduating with my MBA at a semi-target with a 3.7 GPA.
How do I break into CF with limited CF experience?
dont make that move...you will hate your life....look into something with some type of relationship management
This. For the love of god, don't do it. Throw everything you know about building relationships with people out the window. You won't need it because the only thing people in CF know how to talk about is the fucking weather or their damn kids. When asked, "what did you do this weekend?" and you reply with anything other than "not much" or with any sort of details such as "when out Friday night with some friends, drove upstate for a hike saturday, and brunch in soho on sunday" blows their minds, borderline paralyzing them.
You'll no longer have anything to sell and will be bored out of your skull. Dont do it.
The relationship skills are useful when dealing with your managers though. They love hearing about their young, ambitious subordinates, kind of how a parent likes to hear what you did. Then you can sell your work ethic and build a positive reputation with people above you. This is great.
Your colleagues, though, are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked. Gotta go, my damn wiener kids a listening.
Hopefully this isn't too obvious, but you need to think through everything you do or have done in your current job and relate those skills to the skills required on the job, even if they don't directly relate. You need to convey this on your resume and in an interview.
On the resume front, the key is using key buzz words related to the industry/job. So, if you can somehow tie terms like "capital raising", "cost of capital", "financing", "modeling", etc. or even relevant industry or accounting terms "for U.S. GAAP purposes", "market participant assumptions", commeon industry multiples or financial metrics you analyzed on a particular project, etc., these all catch the attention of hiring managers. There is a big difference on a resume between "Built financial models to project risk and cash flows for an investment in a technology company" vs. "Constructed financial models to evaluate investment in a technology company based on historical and projected subscription data, strength and life of customer relationships, and analysis XYZ relevant industry multiples". Both of these could be related to the exact same project, but the second one sounds much stronger and more relevant.
In an interview, similar logic applies. You don't need to have the exact background in that industry or field. People make career changes all the time. They want to know if you're smart, well-spoken, do they like you, and if you can do the job. So, while you might not have built a three statement financial model in wealth management, you can talk about a challenging model you had to build in Excel. What were the issues and how did you solve them? What assumptions did you have to make? etc. How did you improve efficiency around your office? The interviewer wants to know that you're able to do the job, not that you know everything about corporate finance. With every interview I go on, I read the job description and skills beforehand and come up with a story from my background of how my skills are relevant to do that particular task.
This comes across stronger if you can relate to something more recent, such as your current job. But ultimately anything from your background can apply.
Long winded answer, but hopefully it's helpful.
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