What career do I want?
Hey guys,
So I'm currently interning at an advisory boutique. A client came to the company and asked how it can expand either organically or through acquisitions.
I was given the task of thinking up ideas and I freaking loved it. Thinking of ways to grow a company, finding gaps in the market or spotting emerging's ones was awesome. It required me to think, which starkly contrasts to the tasks I'm regularly given.
Obviously I would like to do this as a career, but I'm wondering if there is a career out there where I would be doing this?
I originally thought I wanted to do investing (PE or L/S HF) because you would be evaluating investment opportunities (hence the IB internship), but now I'm having second thoughts. Just looking at numbers without any context doesn't give me the same buzz as thinking on my feet.
I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks
Have you considered consulting? Consultants are asked to optimize a process, and acquiring a new arm/divesting could be a part of that.
I have, but my only concern is (and these are my pre-conceived opinions, so shoot me down if I'm wrong:
Also, would you get a level of influence in PE if you sat on the board of a company you invested in?
Not to sound like a dick, but at the entry level consulting is going to be the closest you're going to get. No one is going to let a 20 something with a boutique internship "have power/control over decisions". Your only shot at that is starting your own business.
Haha nah I understand. I think you've confirmed what I felt Ive always wanted to do. Its just that setting up a business straight out of undergrad is so freaking risky, especially compared to the more lucrative and much safer options out there (ib).
Agree with the sentiment of management consulting. Yes, your recommendations may not actually be implemented, but with your brief description, I think it would be great straight out of undergrad (assuming your an undergrad student). See if you can take any strategy courses at your university's business school. Entrepreneurship is definitely a one way ticket to this. There are also strategic roles within corporations that you may be able to fill post-MBA or later down in your career.
Sorry for the noob question, but are these post-mba strategic role you talk of classed as Corporate development?
I don't think you quite understand the business of IBD. You're in the business of providing advisory work, but at the same time you're not. What you're really in the business of doing is convincing CEO's that your bank is the best bank to offer whatever advisory/financing needs they have. You don't come up with revolutionary stratgies/ideas and everyone on the street knows it. Its a sales and relationship business, not strategy generation. The added value you provide is essentially indistinguishable from what every other bank on the street offers. You don't come up with revolutionary ideas, you're there to leverage your banks brand name/expertise if you're a BB, or affordable prices/ customized/specialized services/ 24/7 access if you're a small boutique. Don't get it twisted, YOU'LL be doing 99% of the learning as far as the client's business is concerned. In IBD, you don't win business by providing the best idea, you win business by managing/implementing touch points with your clients, wining & dining them, building trust, telling them how f*kin amazing their company is etc.
TLDR; Go to consulting. If your goal is high level strategy/positioning/market analysis that's 100% what they do. Even at a junior level you do a fair share of this type of thinking/work. At an MBB, you're in the business of convincing companies that they are broken, inefficient, dinosaurs, and that you have the magical answer to all of their problems. That is 100% not the case in IBD.
I think you can find what you're looking for in PE. Like others have said, in IB, any sort of buy/build analysis or other ad-hoc strategy advice a client asks for is A. Not making any money for you B. Will be knowingly slanted towards influencing the client to make a decision that will make you money. At the same time though, you gain a strong skill set and dig through enough businesses in 2+ years that you will be in a much better position to provide strategy advice to businesses.
Flash forward to when you get into PE, depending on the shop you get into, you should be able to relatively quickly move into a role where you can identify and help execute on the high level strategy issues that you've found interest you.
I agree with trader_timmy that PE is probably the best option. I've done a little PE work myself in a boutique, the "growth PE" tier is probably what you want to look at. Read 1 of the M&I articles on PE work.
However, PE is generally seperated into 2 divisions: 1. the generalist behemoths (KKR/Apollo/Carlyle) 2. specialist boutiques (much, much smaller & generally will be experts in a particular sector)
2-and-20 pay scheme. The problem lies here: If you want to a steady salary + bonus, you gotta go to a big place. Trouble is, the only way you can penetrate a big place is with a ton of experience in either IB/Consulting (hence, the term "exit ops"). If you want autonomy, start your own fund or join a burgeoning one. Either way, your own skin is in the game, and if you fuck up your first few deals, your rep is pretty much shot. GL with anything related to PE after that.
You don't seem to really want to pursue the IBD route. That's perfectly fine. The consulting route is equally as hard. Analyst hours are less, but you'll be travelling a lot if you're at an MBB. Don't go for consulting if it's not MBB, exit out of that is pretty garbage/impossible to do.
The only place where you're going to be designing strategy and then implementing it will be as an entrepreneur or as a line manager in a larger company (e.g. a general manager at a F500 company). Even in a corp strat role in a F500 you won't be making decisions, you'll be advising your internal clients on what to do. The P&L owners have the final say on what gets implemented. That's a big reason I left consulting; I wanted ownership over the business strategy that I had designed. Any job where you are a P&L owner will allow you to do the kind of work you're looking for.
............
No entry level job or even anywhere close to entry level is going to give you the power to make major decisions. Maybe an experienced consultant can chime in but even though consulting is, in generic terms, developing a strategy for X (whatever X is), you're still doing somewhat boring work for a couple of years and the more senior consultants (not the most senior, whatever they're called) are pulling all of the data together and making the recommendations. And the consultants are definitely not pulling the trigger on the decisions at the operating company.
And yes, that's what you do to a degree in some PE (and I stress some-the more operationally focused ones but that's an entirely different discussion) as a board member or higher level person at the fund but most of the time you hire consultants to give you the ideas and you say yes or no and execs at the portfolio company implement that strategy. And it's difficult to break into PE, even more difficult to get on a partner track and it will be years until you get to any point where you'll be making a decision. The path to any coolness is paved with years of monotonous work with really long hours.
As Masterz57 said, at an operating company you do this with P&L responsibility but at a company of any size (F500 or even outside of that) it takes a long time to control a P&L, and most likely contains even more years of boring work. A good way to accelerate on that career path is consulting (or IB/PE but consulting is the most traditional way). You also get to deal with big company politics.
Entrepreneurship is obvious on the surface and there are two basic routes. Tech VC startup, and there are tons of threads on WSO about that so I won't address it but it's a very difficult route with a high failure rate. Other more entrepreneurial activities normally take having a wealthy family to initially invest in your new restaurant/craft brewery/widget factory in which case: congratulations you won the lucky sperm lottery; or you have to learn an industry from the nuts and bolts level, save/borrow money and start a business, work even more than in IB and stress the hell out all the time making your business work. High risk, lots of work but high reward.
I don't mean to sound discouraging but as a new grad you need to realize you have very little to offer in the grand scheme of things. The reason you start out doing what seems like boring work is that for one thing it needs to be done by someone, and you need to do the entry level stuff to learn how to get to the next step and the next and so on. I remember in undergrad we had to do some big group project where we pretended to run a company through all of the functional areas and we thought when we graduated we were all going to be execs pulling the levers and knobs. After a year or so a bunch of us got back together and everyone-in finance, real estate, F500 rotationals, tech, people in ad/PR, whatever (except for one kid who went into the family business)-said we're just sitting around doing bullshit excel, accounting, powerpoints, writing press releases, etc. Pick a path you want-between here, M&I and many other resources on the internet you should be able to figure out what you want to do ultimately and the entry level positions that will give you the knowledge and opportunity to achieve your goal. Then work your ass off at every level and make career tweaks as you go along and as your goals change.
Qui aut et temporibus laborum enim. Molestias dicta aut similique vero voluptatibus praesentium. Velit molestiae ut consequuntur sint. Nisi explicabo doloribus itaque repudiandae aut sunt qui.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...