Looking for Advice: Banking SA to Asset Management Full Time

I just started my internship in corporate/investment banking at a MM in NY and although its early, I don't believe this is the right path for me. I've started looking into for full-time roles in asset managementas I like the structure of these programs more. Does anyone have any knowledge on AM full-time recruiting (how hard it is, how many spots are typically left over from prior versus IBD/ other banking roles, and if my banking background would help my prospects? Ideally, I'd work at an AM or PB arms of BB's (JPM, BAML etc) but I'm also open to working at AM firms like BlackRock, Fidelity. How soon should I begin to network for these positions (are there accelerated full-time recruiting timelines like in IB? Any advice would be appreciated.

 
Best Response

Just stumbled upon this old thread-- as an ex-investment banking summer analyst who recruited for scores of asset management firms before signing a full-time sell-side ER offer, I now have the benefit of retrospect, so I'll try to shed some light on this.

In short, the full-time recruiting process for Asset Management kind of sucks; it's a lot easier to get a buy-side role in most traditional asset managers going through the junior recruiting process instead. The major asset managers with undergraduate internship programs--think Fidelity, Wellington, MFS, T. Rowe, Putnam, AllianceBernstein, Eaton Vance, and bulge bracket banks with asset management divisions like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs--already have very small intern classes (usually between 5 and 20 people), and like most places in finance these days, they usually try to fill their entire full-time classes with those returning interns. In that vein, Wellington and the asset management divisions at the bulge brackets did virtually no full-time hiring this year, only junior intern hiring.

That said, full-time recruiting for asset management doesn't suck quite as much as the full-time process for investment banking (where literally nobody gets the job except returning interns and a few accelerated lateral hires). In my experience recruiting this year, most asset managers still had a few spots open in their "regular" full-time recruiting process. How many? Not too many: when I interviewed at T. Rowe's bond research division, they were hiring 3 undergraduates in the country. I imagine it was more or less the same deal when I interviewed at both the equity and bond research divisions of Fidelity and Putnam. AllianceBernstein as well. Among the Boston-based asset managers, MFS was also hiring, although I didn't interview there.

Unlike in investment banking, it doesn't seem like most of the asset managers maintain accelerated recruiting tracks for lateral hires. You just submit your resume in September (side note: I literally got an interview from T. Rowe by submitting my resume online. It can really happen!), and then interview in October. Networking will certainly help, but as you can see, the process is less fast-paced than in banking, so you can still count on OCR and good old resume drops as well.

One more thing: having banking experience on your resume can help your prospects, although not necessarily in the way you might expect. I worked in a not-great banking group at Wells Fargo (a decent but not top-tier investment bank), but simply having that name was enough for me to clear the resume screens at tons of elite asset managers. Beyond the initial resume screen, however, banking doesn't help so much. I was literally never asked a single time about my deal experience in any of my asset management interviews. Instead, it's on you to explain why you want to move from banking to asset management (not too hard in my opinion-- just say that you wanted to be an investor, and banking doesn't really let you analyze companies in a meaningful way since you're just focused on selling the transaction).

Hope this helps!

 

Honestly, I'm not sure. I know the end goal for people on WallStreetOasis is always to exit from the sell-side to buy-side to "greatness," but frankly, I don't really know if that's something that interests me in the long term.

This is rarely mentioned on the forums (perhaps because it's obvious), but the dynamics of buy-side and sell-side jobs are rather different. As an analyst at my firm once explained to me, when you're working on the buy-side, your analysis has to be right. When you're on the sell-side, your analysis doesn't actually have to be right, it just has to be interesting and insightful. Many sell-side analysts aren't even that insightful, they're just there to provide corporate access. Either way, it's unclear to me whether a buy-side job is really obviously better than what I can get on the sell-side.

 

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