Just finished undegrad, no internship experience...feel hopeless, where do I start?
Hey guys,
So I graduated from the honors finance program at a non target. GPA 3.66. No internship experience. Have some good extra curriculars. I did well in my classes and understand financial theory but I have no practical experience. They never covered excel once in my entire bachelor, but I tried to learn a bit of modelling on my own. I followed the markets a bit but have never really conducted any full research reports or created any pitches.
Having finished school now, I feel completely screwed...does anyone have any tips on how I can get my foot in the door and find a financial analyst position?
I want to find work as a financial analyst so I can learn to model and get some practical experience.
All the entry level job postings I find online expect excellent excel skills, demonstrated knowledge of capital markets etc.
My excel skills: I don't know all the formulas or short cuts, I google for short cuts and formulas when I can but I have a lot more to memorize...i've only worked on about 10 models in my life and never got any real feedback so I don't even know where I could have improved...
My knowledge of capital markets: I can tell you what's been going on these last couple weeks in terms of news headlines but can't give you a big picture outlook of the last few months or years. Don't know any industry particularly well, don't know much about the fed or any of the unemployment, housing numbers or even what impact they have on the market...I mean I could reason it out logically, but never used any of the fed releases in any of my classes at school... i've looked at a 10k and 10q maybe 10 times total...i can tell you how the financial statements work but I am not quick and fluent enough for any tricky interview questions...
I read: WSJ, Globe & mail, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Business Insider, Dealbook, Seeking Alpha, FT, HBR, Motley Fool, The Economist, Zero Hedge and Entrepreneur.
I have all the investment banking interview guides, the vault etc.
Ive read the intelligent investor, capital markets, Liars Poker, warren buffet way and im reading how to make money in stocks right now.
I know the very basics of valuation (just the theory they showed us in class, basic financial ratios, industry analysis, comps)
Even though I get the theories and read an hour of news every morning, I just don't have the practical experience so I don't know really know the ins and outs and can only go so far in a finance discussion. I always start to feel out of place when talking with guys who have work experience.
I feel completely hopeless, please someone give me some practical guidance! What firms will hire a guy like me right now? I can learn really fast given an actual assignment. Without a specific direction, I just don't know where to start!
Start by looking for internships and networking(there are plenty of threads on networking), learn some excel modelling,maybe some programming( there's a user named mr.finance on the pirate bay that has a lot of books relevant to finance and modelling which you can DL). I just don't understand how you don't even have one internship under your belt.
where to start, where to start. personally I think you should get some kind of job so you have a source of income and so you don't have a humongous resume gap, regardless of the role. you should be able to get some sort of financial analyst job without internship experience but it'll be difficult to get into ib, ER, etc. even though you went to a non target your school should have career fairs or some sort of resource, even if it's just a job board. opportunities will depend on what industries are big in your area.
many of my fraternity brothers who did ug b school and goofed off were still able to get corporate finance jobs at local companies. none of the companies were investment banks, asset managers, etc., but still they're financial analysts and didn't have any internship experience. take some excel courses, get on job banks, start networking, and just get out there. you should be fine. from there, if you want to get into banking/ER, you'll have to do the normal non-target stuff: network, technicals, etc.
There is no sense on stressing about what you can't change but you really dropped the ball by not getting even one internship. I lucked out of a similar situation by cold calling as many numbers as I could get my hands on the year before I graduated. Start networking.
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