Career path and development
Hi All,
Quick question to get your sense on next steps from a career development standpoint.
I'm post-MBA and have been working with the same organization for about 5 years now. I started on the operational side, but after two years jumped over to a corporate finance role. Over the past three years, I handled a variety of corporate finance tasks from revenue modelling, consolidating budget model creation, target valuation, due diligence, capital budgeting and business case development (has been such a prevalent part of my job i have this down to a science...) and now, over the past 6 months, capital structure and debt issuance -- I've been PM'ing our current debt program that includes multiple tranches from a core corp standpoint and for our controlled property subsidiary (reit like).
My question is where to go from here. I report jointly to the CFO (for broad strokes and direction) and to the VP of Finance (for day-to-day issues) but am still only at an analyst level. In fact, there's no "director" level role to move in to other than creating this for me (and VPFin says there's no organizational desire to do so). Without a jump in title, I won't get a bump in pay even through I'm handling nearly all of the fp&a functions (as an aside, we're about $750 million in revenue a year on a consolidated basis)
Any thoughts on future career development that aren't simply jump ship or to suck it up? I keep bringing up a development plan, and VPFin keeps saying "we'll discuss it later" while my CFO wants a more concrete plan from me (and yet, providing her one would certainly irk the guy in between us...)
Your VP sounds like an asshole.
I would go to the CFO an say something along the lines of "Look, I like what I do here and the company is great and I want to stay in the long run and yadda-yadda, buuuut... A) I'm here for 5 years already and not being promoted starts to look bad for me and B) I'm not developing the managerial skillset I should start developing at this point. I feel like I have enough technical/industry chops at this point to take on additional responsibility and start mentoring/managing someone".
Not sure how the org/ranks are set up at your company and what's your experience pre-MBA, but at 5 years post-MBA you should be a senior manager at least (director might be a stretch). So I would ask for a senior manager position with a couple junior (analyst/pre-MBA maybe) direct reports who you would teach what you're doing now while you yourself can take additional responsibilities.
Just make sure to frame it nicely and all when you're talking to the CFO, I'm just giving you the essence.
If they don't promote you I'd start looking for a new job, cause it really does start looking bad for you. Either a lateral (with promotion) to a similar company, or you could also look at consulting - what you're doing is pretty relevant, especially if you're in a hot industry, or at least one that has many companies that hire consultants.
That's what I was afraid of. CFO seems amenable to this, and that's how I started to frame my first discussion with her.
Would love to go consulting, but the better half is on the Partner track at her current consulting firm. She's of the mind that it would be difficult to have both of us (especially given we have a 2 year old...!).
Anyway...thanks for the insight!
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