Business Development/Corporate Development Programs

Bump

Island101:

Note, I am not looking for a finance or operations specific program, but something focused on sales, BD, M&A, and strategy. I imagine places like Google, Apple, and GE would be good places to look at? Where else should I look and where are the best places from a prestige perspective?

That is a really random list of companies. Not really sure why you think they would be good places to look at, but maybe try looking for companies with a lot of dealflow if you want to do M&A? Seems like common sense. Sales, M&A and strategy can also all mean very different things.

Given how clueless you are, your best bet is to do IBD for a few years until you figure out what it is you actually want to do.

To address your CorpDev question, I currently am interning in CorpDev and have interviewed at 3+ CorpDev internship positions. CorpDev is a big crap shoot to find open spots, AFAIK there are no groups that consistently recruit a class. Many Corp Dev departments are less than 5 people and run extremely lean. With that said, all my app's have been submitted online so I would say the competition is far less fierce. Of the 3+ places I interviewed at, all but one mentioned that there was little chance of getting a FT offer there. In all honesty, you could probably combine your IBD recruiting and CorpDev recruiting together. There is a massive amount of overlap in regards to technicals and just because CorpDev positions are rare to come by.

Sometimes in CorpDev, you will have to do finance and operations analyses, which supports "strategy". My current role also involves me analyzing capacity analysis for the CEO and doing strategic finance initiatives on potential Series D/debt investors.

I imagine places like Google, Apple, and GE would be good places to look at? Where else should I look and where are the best places from a prestige perspective?

That statement alone tells me you're not going to be able to do CorpDev out of undergrad. You need to be very industry specific during your undergrad years if you're going to go straight into CorpDev.

From a prestige perspective, I'm not sure what that means. The position is relied on heavily on, by executive management, to make very important decisions, no matter where you are or what brand name you're backed by..

I'd definitely focus on just getting that FT offer so you can "hone in" on what exactly it is you want.

Sorry for the rudeness in here... that's uncalled for.

I think finding a good fit for you is going to be determined by what kind of work interests you more. A CorpDev dept at a firm that does few deals is going to be mostly strategy-focused, while a firm that does a lot of M&A is going to be mostly M&A-focused (obvi). I work at a firm that does very few deals for our size, and CorpDev is relegated basically to competitive intelligence.

Two CorpDev programs I've heard good things about are Medtronic and Eaton, but in the case of Medtronic, they're really going to want someone with previous healthcare sector experience. I wouldn't worry too much about prestige; I would say as long as it's a company that the average corporate recruiter would recognize, you're safe from obscurity.

Very few companies recruit for Dev/Strat out of ugrad. Disney has 1 CorpStrat position open each year. CapOne has a CorpStrat spot open, but I think it goes almost exclusively to a Brown grad (the Disney spot is similar, maybe Harvard).

Your best bet for CorpDev is 2 years IB -> CD, with MBB close 2nd Your best bet for CorpStrat is 2 years MBB -> CS, with IB close 2nd

Thanks everyone for the input. Much appreciated.

I just accepted an offer from a BizDev group of a large ($100bn+ revs), well-respected company earlier this week and I graduated undergrad this past May.

The keys to finding these are persistence and breadth. Usually a spot opens up because someone left (what happened for me) or they just decided they're large enough to warrant another analyst so you kind of have to stumble across these companies at the right time. BizDev spots are out there, you just have to be willing to search.

You'll want to look for large, diversified companies. Reason being that they're more likely to be the ones to consider hiring an undergrad because the Biz Dev dept is large enough to require analyst support. As InvertedMooning mentioned, most of these groups run small because most companies aren't Fortune 500 companies. The smaller they are, the more experience they need their people to have. InvertedMooning also pointed out how they don't have classes, meaning that they won't have IDB-style training programs and are going to need even entry level hires to have a decent amount of finance/modeling experience - but given that you're a BB SA, you'll probably be fine there.

Another consideration to think about is location. Most companies' headquarters are not in major metropolitan areas. So if you're loving NYC this summer, you might want to stick with it and if you get tired of it then lateral over. I think this factor (availability being another) is a major reason why these spots aren't really considered or talked about as much as IBD/consulting.

Curious in 2018. What field did you end up pursuing? Thinking about MBB ==> Cop Dev right now.

Bumping an old thread but UnitedHealth group has a corp dev program that they routinely hire multiple analysts a year for.