Quitting to get something better

I am working in a sector of finance that I don't want to be in forever (pension fund). I feel my current position is holding me back from going all out to get the job I really want and need at this stage of my career i.e. junior analyst at a bulge bracket bank/PE fund. I do not have time to prepare adequately for interviews and often I am unable to attend the time slots given to me due to constant client deadlines. It has been made clear to me that I will not be promoted in my current job and will likely be cut at the end of this year due to difficulties that the business is having. Should I just cut my losses now and quit? I'm fresh out of grad school and 29 years old as I took a tough and long-winded route into the finance industry and have only a year of experience so far. Do you think I should stay a bit longer until the end of the year to fill out my CV or just take the jump now?

 

depends if you're definitely going to be cut or not, what your financial situation is, how strong of a prospect you are for the job you want, etc

you might have to lower the standards a bit besides just BB/PE analyst if you want to find a job within a realistic time frame

what did you go to grad school for, and how are their career services?

 

Career services are pretty avg. to be fair as they are over-burdened. Bit of background: Got a very strong grade at undergrad from a non-target school in a non-business/finance degree. Went to a good brand name grad school to transition to finance-only just scraped through but got a few different internships in M&A from a couple of boutiques and one in-house at a big well known corporate. I'm a smart guy-just didn't have the required quant background to do well in an extremely quantitative grad school finance program. I only speak English and London (where I work) is extremely tough to break into due to a heavy requirement for multiple languages. The difficulties in Europe and the open-border policy of the EU have also led to a huge influx of qualified candidates with proficiency in multiple languages which also makes it far more competitive than it was in the past. I am considering leaving the current role, learning a new language, and applying for roles in emerging markets where I believe I could potentially go further and faster. My plan would be to try to make this happen by the end of this year.

 
Best Response

Definitely do not quit. You need to pick up your performance at your current job and do everything that you can to not get fired before the year end.

As you mentioned in your second post, London is extremely tough to break into and you need to be multilingual. How are you going to find an IB/PE job while unemployed and only speaking English? I do not work in London, but judging from your posts, it would seem that you would have almost no chance to get an IB/PE job at that point. You are not going to become fluent in another language in a year, and being unemployed always looks bad.

I would just suck it up and make time to prepare for interviews. It really should not take more than 20-30 hours if you are starting from scratch, and that can be spaced out across several days. Never quit a job unless you have another one lined up. Good luck.

 

Agree with the above, I know that its tough to find jobs when you are working long hours but quitting isn't a good idea if your plan is to find another job. If you are struggling to get interview now, its going to be a lot harder when your unemployed. Not sure exactly when you are expecting to get cut, but it sounds like you have 6-8 months which should be enough time. You have to evaluate how strong of a candidate you are for BB IB / PE right now, if you are struggling hard to get interviews you might want to go for more realistic options like MM / boutique IB.

 

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