Q&A: MBB, BB S&T+IB, Top MBA, US/Global

bump back atcha

B-school student, haha.

Probably not the answer you AllStateRap had in mind but it was the most fulfilling experience. Don’t get me wrong, undergrad was an absolute riot, but at that stage in life you just don't realize how fleeting carefree youth is. When you've gone back to get your MBA, you try to make the most out of every hour you have, because you know how much of a grind the institutional working world can be.

As for jobs, not sure this counts as fulfilling but I definitely got the biggest rush out of the trading floor.

Can't speak to the actual job at MBB because I haven't started yet, but walking out of an interview round thinking "don't know if they liked it but I can look at myself in the mirror and say I gave it my best shot" felt pretty serenely satisfying. (Getting the good news felt pretty damn good too).

FTI and Eurasia are actually very different, though I grouped them together because as you pointed out, they're both part of the political risk consulting world. Can’t answer whether it’s all it’s cracked up to be because people have such different definitions of cool, but what I can tell you is:

FTI is clustered with Kroll and Control Risks (they all do kind of the same thing), while Eurasia goes about its business in a fundamentally different way. Kroll is where the industry started and retains some mystique, Control Risks has its really nifty World Risk Map that clients love, and FTI is the most similar to regular consulting firms and probably the strongest in the US.

What do you want to know about these places? At the industry level, I'll say that...

1) Pay-wise, same kind of bracket as the non-consulting sides of the Big 4. 2) London is the epicenter (NY and DC folks would take issue with that but London is the only heavyweight for both M&A and emerging markets relationships, which are the key drivers in this industry). 3) Unstructured from a recruiting POV (driven by network and connections); faces a challenge in harmoniously putting people of messily different backgrounds one consulting service (lawyers, journalists, ex-spooks, ex-military, etc).

FTI, Kroll and Control Risks all tend to work discreetly, say little in public about their work, and embed their political analyses into professional services that are much more typical of the business world than the political world. Example: due diligence on a company's management team and shareholders. The twist is that no one is supposed to know they're carrying out the DD (unlike legal, financial or strategic DD), and in emerging markets, they will uncover whether the business and/or its owners benefit from cozy political access. These things are essentially outlawed in places like the US and Germany so the work is duller there.

Conversely, Eurasia Group is regularly speaking to the press, putting their Analysts on Bloomberg TV, etc. An exit for an Analyst might be Parliament in their country of origin, for example. Very different businesses.

I should say that very rarely will a sophisticated and well-heeled client engage these firms to give them an exhaustive political analysis on Iran, if that's what you have in mind. This answer probably longer than you had in mind so will keep it at that, pending more specific questions.

fine-nance See first point on suggested guidelines - please don't ask questions that require me to divulge my background to satisfactorily answer. Amused by the name, by the way.

That said, indeed some LDP are more focused on undergrads and others on MBAs. I personally admire companies that are willing to commit the resources into developing undergraduate talent by giving them cross-divisional exposure, much to the annoyance of middle managers, in the hope that it pays off in the form of a better leadership pipeline. It's actually really hard to do.

However, my thoughts are that these programs make more sense when focused on MBAs, as they only really pay off in the long-term and 22 year-old Millennials are just way too unlikely to commit their careers to their first employer in meaningful numbers. MBAs are increasingly dicey for these purposes too, but an employer is more likely to find someone on the older end who has the temperament and maturity to take the longer road to success.

If you're considering a LDP, the key factor to screen for you in your Due Diligence is the level of patronage and seniority sponsoring the program. It really needs to be as senior as possible: C-suite level, preferably CEO or CFO, and the leadership needs to be emotionally vested in the program's success.

The banner program in this case is Chevron's Finance MBA program, but 1. of course there are others and 2. you still need to be a fit for a long-term, asset-intensive industry (urban legend is a highly entrepreneurial guy was hired and he quit within a week due to cultural mismatch). The more introspective question to ask is whether you see yourself as someone who can commit to a single employer for your whole career (which is less and less common). If so, a good LDP is very possibly the best job you can get.

Wow. I'm not even sure my parents or girlfriend want to know about the entire journey (though the coolest parts of the journey are always non-work anyway).

But to answer your questions DeltaDecay: I honestly craved the variety. I had detailed reasons for each individual transition, but assessing the story as a whole, if there was an overarching trend, it would be that I went from Macro perspective with specialized skills to Micro with increasingly generalist skills, which culminates in consulting.

There was a geographic element to consulting too: I decided to go back to my hometown, which has a big enough business scene for all major banks and consultancies to have offices... but is in that segment where the actual bank headcount is small-ish while the consulting presence is pretty solid.

Hi there, looks like you had fun with that screen name @financeiswacc". To your first question, the former.

Since indeed you wanted IB, didn't get it and are considering LDP...

No reason to lose hope. You may discover you really like your company, and if your LDP has the right visibility and support at the very top (see previous answer), it can be an amazing platform to develop a career. When they're done right, they turn into a bit of a 'club' whose members continually get promoted over time. And if you don't like the business or company culture, these programs get plenty of respect come b-school time. And as long as investment banks haven't completely thrown the towel in terms of being attractive employers for MBAs, you WILL get an IB job coming out of b-school.

I understand your decision conundrum. Can't make the decision for you but can offer you the following thought: the only door that will close forever if you don't take it now is S&T (whether the industry will even exist in 5-10 years is another question entirely). FLDP and IBD are still there in significant numbers for MBAs at top 15 and even top 20 schools. At that level, it is almost entirely a "fit" game.

You're welcome.

I'd lean EB as the focus on advisory will be better from a skills POV, and the $ is better these days.

Not sure what you meant by seeing my counterparts struggle to bring in deals. That responsibility is/was way above my paygrade. Happy to give it a shot if you clarify...

That said, overall the IB market is increasingly involving balance sheet, which results in way more fees for banks that are able to get in as advisors, underwrite the bridge loans, and get the capital markets mandates to fund acquisitions. This favors BB.

Brainpower: S&T, on a derivatives desk - the inherent abstraction and logic set a threshold that most common garden banking/business/consulting types have a really hard time meeting. Very narrow application of said brainpower, though.

Critical thinking skills: MBB (from what I've seen of the selection process). Very simple concepts all things considered, but the interviews are designed to test your agility in them. Without practice, lots of scary-smart people can make asses out of themselves in a case.

Honestly, this question doesn't belong here - not that I don't want to help, but I struggle to see how my experience can be of relevance to you.

Your reason for having MBB as your ultimate goal ("because they consider JD as advanced degrees") is non sequitur. The real reason you probably aren't getting interviews is because T30 Law School is not considered a target for them. I don't know much about law, but from what I understand, T14 are the targets. I have a very good friend who interviewed with McKinsey and BCG while at Harvard Law, but that's Harvard Law, and he was that rare breed of lawyer who had a quant undergrad (think Astrophysics or Applied Math major). Of course there are cases, but I don't think I know anyone at MBB who was hired as a fresh JD - and I know a lot of people there.

Similarly, buyside due diligence, special situations / distressed investments, coming from law school... makes you sound like you don't really know what you want and are just seeking lucrative careers that aren't law.

However, your interest in positioning yourself as an advisor to international investors looking at China and helping them navigate China's business culture sounds like a good fit for Big 4. They have groups that do this. Which exactly, I don't know - as I mentioned from the start, my experience is unfortunately not very relevant to you. It might make more sense for you to do this in China, though no harm in trying the US offices too.

Good luck.

Hi silverace, thanks for asking. I should preface the answer by recalling that I was in a financing group - what I would call "IB lite", not IBD. Which isn't a bad thing for the purposes of answering your question - DCM, Project Finance, etc also fall into that category.

I found Banking to be highly process-driven, and much more about completing a large number of pre-defined steps (some stressful, mostly tedious, and all requiring attention to detail) as opposed to forming a view or developing an investment thesis, which to me, made it ultimately unsatisfying.

As for what you say about not finding much info on these groups, I'm surprised you're saying that about DCM - there's tons of info on WSO about DCM/ECM. Overall, these "IB lite" groups usually work you about 60-70% of the hours in IB, give you 50%-60% of the skills, and 70%-80% of the pay. So if you purely seek to optimize money with some semblance of a work-life balance, they are good groups to be in. They make sense if you want to pursue a long-ish career at a bank. And to anyone who isn't IBD or ex-IBD, you're considered to be in investment banking (they won't see you as one, though).

However, in my view, the real value in an IBD skillset comes in the last 20%, so these financing groups are going to feel lacking in that department. Out of all of them, Project Finance might be the best one in terms of skills while still paying okay and allow you something of a life, though it's a challenging sub-industry within finance overall (tough returns environment, lots of competition from tier 2 banks who don't mind using balance sheet).

That said, to sum up my time in Banking, it was not the right fit for me and I definitely had to get out, but I am glad I did it. For one, the experience earns you respect in the job market, and I was overpaid. Perhaps more importantly, a strong sense of camaraderie is formed at the junior ranks, so I walked out with good friendships at that level - more than in any other job I've had. Although work-wise the fit wasn't there, I ended up having a solid relationship of mutual respect/appreciation with my MD, and I developed a few other senior relationships too. So I've chosen to keep the good parts and let go of the bad.

Excellent question gryphus. There is absolutely a "golden handcuffs"/impossible to repatriate risk with heading off to EM.

My reasons were basically: I wanted adventure; I saw high growth rates and a chance to accelerate my career; EMs tend to have lower tax rates; and depending on the market, the babes, the chicks.

The UAE, as you mention, is particularly pernicious. Sunny lifestyle, pampered service, hedonistic spending, tax-free salaries with cushy expat benefits... Most folks down there come from London. After a few years of that, the idea of losing half your take-home income to cram yourself and possibly your family into a house a third the size, with no domestic help, competing harder at work, and in dreadful weather... just becomes too much to bear. So people become career expats.

So yes, that risk is real. The key considerations that come to mind are:

1) Time your move well. If it's a pre-MBA move, you've got an easy ticket out. You'll come off twice as interesting as the version of you who stayed in whatever vanilla job you had. 2) Build expertise around execution and/or management, as opposed to clients. If you go to to some EM and the clients love you there, it just no longer makes any sense to have you anywhere but there. But if your skillset isn't directly tied to local revenue-generating opportunities, you can move around more easily. (Of course, you'll probably make less money at the EM if you don't milk the local opportunities). 3) You'll develop an insight from the experience that you currently don't have, which may or may not allow you to pursue something entrepreneurial. EMs are a high beta proposition. When an economy has been growing for 7-8% compounded for a number of years' straight, the irrational exuberance becomes deafening. And when the crash comes (it always does), everyone thinks the country is about to become a failed state - the next (sorry) Pakistan or Venezuela. You get tons of perspective from living through these kind of mass episodes of mania.

Thpeaking with a lithp has been the most preftigious.

Started out getting exposure to two of three defining asset classes that constitute FICC Sales via short rotations, and did well, but for a number of reasons ended up in Equity Derivatives. I would say we spent 2/3rds of the time with vanilla European options and 1/3rd with exotics (most of which were on the lighter end).

Did not pick up programming beyond some very elementary code in Visual Basic, and while it was not at all the main reason for my departure, it absolutely would have been beneficial to a future in Trading/Structuring, and I didn't see myself building a career around those skills.

Conventional wisdom is 2 years in general, and even more so for your first job. I definitely cleared this bar in my first job.

If you are staying within the same bank and just moving product and/or location, I think you have some margin.

Hey there @warmpi", good question. Overall it has not been detrimental. I'm no spring chicken anymore so these employers span quite a long time, and S&T and Banking were at the same BB; plus, I had a summer internship where I didn't take the return offer. So, while an interviewer has to read my resume a bit more closely than they like, it doesn't set off job hopper alarm bells.

That said I did encounter a couple of issues. A minor one was that a certain profile of interviewer would react poorly: a career (insert product group/asset class) banker/trader within my own BB during internal interviews. In contrast, external interviewers would express benign envy: "[wow or sigh] I wish I could have done that."

The second and more important issue is that my experience was not additive, as the job functions were so different from each other. That's one of the reasons I decided that consulting would cast a generalist sheen on my professional profile and allow all my past functions to serve as extra color.

As for locations, in general almost all of them have been a ton of fun, as long as you have the mentality to take advantage of the opportunities. I've been a lucky guy in that sense. I had a blast in college and b-school for example, and they weren't in exotic/far-flung locations at all. I went wild during the training period at the BB at one of the major hubs. My hometown (to which I'm returning) was also ridiculously fun (think of it as a lifestyle city that is big enough for most banks and all MBB to have offices, but not big enough to be a major hub - ie. LA, Miami, or if you want to picture it in a European version, a major continental cities like Paris, Madrid or Munich).

Hard to compare Latam and HK - gigantic region vs a tiny quasi city-state. While a lot of things remain the same (hustle and bustle, money out of control, amazing food), my perspective on HK is outdated - mainland Chinese were not at all a significant demographic in the HK that I was exposed to, so according to my friends there now, that's a big change. Latam and HK are also just so different in mentality that I'd need to know a little more what you're trying to ask. But if it's just straight up personal preference - Latam over HK, no doubt.

Hi @inhopesofshorterhours": the short of it is that my main reason for leaving was that I didn't think the industry had much of a future from a headcount perspective. Unfriendly/burdensome regulation and technological substitution are a pretty nasty double whammy facing hitting folks on the trading floor. With this outlook, I'd rather be a salesman - if you can sell, there's always an outlet for you, whether it be headhunting, houses, used cars, or opening a strip club. Being an obsolete trader strikes me as way more terrifying.

You mention volatility and revenues... If you've been on a derivatives desk during a volatility spike, you'll see that there's going to be a trader or two with a 8/9-digit P&L thanks to that one day. Remember that while volatility, mathematically, can mean an asset is making big moves up or down, in practice, based on social realities (takes Michelangelo years to build the skills necessary to sculpt the statue of David, but any moron with a sledgehammer can demolish it within an hour), high volatility usually means falling asset prices. So yes, volatility can be good for intermediaries (which is what investment banks are), but it depends very much on the function and the way risk is managed.

What desk are you joining?

Thanks man Lead Left, smart questions and of course the SB to the original post is always welcome (gives the thread visibility which results in more questions).

Happy to do intra-industry/geography discussion too though folks are probably right to ask inter-industry/geography q's.

1. Open-minded about it. All the odds suggest it's a stepping stone but I could see myself staying in the long run too (which I couldn't actually see when at the BB).

2. Nice observation regarding marginal pay differences; my answer here is a continuation of the first answer. Any discussion of long-term earning potential must involve the probability of making it to the top (MD/Partner level). In banking the industry growth rates have been so stagnant that I simply did not see enough net new senior position creation for a career path up top to be feasible, nor the grind remotely desirable. In consulting a lot of campus jobs (which is the lion's share of the hiring) are replacements, but there is still some net headcount growth. Compensation-wise, finance pays better in every step of the way until Partner/MD (though the delta successively decreases), so consulting only beats finance in compensation when you consider the really long view.

3. Who said I'm not American? I don't recall doing so, hah. In general, I always miss something about each place I've left (usually friendships, work and non-work related). But to your point, since (American or not) regardless I'm not from any of the US cities I got degrees from or worked in, yes, there is a lot I will miss from these places (already do). They treated me really, really well.

To the general matter of what I miss about the US when I'm outside it: the general spirit of constant reinvention. I've, on rare occasion, seen this spirit elsewhere, but never as broadly and constantly as the US. The common denominators are: being a young country, lots of exposure to people different from you (usually via immigration), and viable growth prospects.

Conversely, I've noticed a correlation between nativist attitudes and sclerotic labor markets. Thinking that everyone has their place based on predetermined qualities usually means you're also hostile to reinvention. That spirit of constant reinvention, which I love about America, is more fragile than most people realize. I wouldn't take it for granted.

Thanks for the kind words, dude.

To answer your first question: from what I've seen ... Lateral hires from other consulting firms should usually preserve most of their seniority. Lateral hires from other industries will usually come in at the corresponding entry-level depending on whether they are pre-MBA or post-MBA (ie. someone who is 2 yrs out of undergrad will come in at the undergrad hire level; 2 yrs out of b-school at the b-school hire level). Sometimes, an "accelerated track" can be negotiated, but not always.

The exceptions I have seen are when laterals are senior and established enough that they are hired into a specific practice, in which they are sometimes temporarily placed at the post-MBA level for 6 months so they can learn how to be a consultant, and then assume their 'proper' seniority at the Manager / Principal / Partner level.

All told I am certainly not an expert on this topic and imagine it varies quite a lot not just firm by firm, but also, office to office.

To answer your second question, in your place I would choose to apply to a specific office and/or specialization (if you have one), and network with MBA classmates who are in that office. I think it would be enough to ask them for a quick intro to the recruiting manager, whom you would follow up with on the phone, for example. There, you both can figure out what the right 'spot' for you is and what the corresponding selection process will be. If you can get that started, then well done and the rest will be the usual: prepare your story and above all case prep.

Damn. I had replied to this but it got lost.

Congrats on getting that IB offer, especially from a non-target!

You're right in thinking I may not be best-positioned to give you advice, since I didn't work at a MM and I was in financing rather than advisory.

There's tons of material on the internet on how to succeed as a fresh IBD analyst, so I'm sure you can find it and I won't reinvent the wheel.

To the extent that most 1st year Analyst jobs are also supposed to be your first full-time job ever, a big part of the learning curve is simply about learning how to work, period. As a result, a lot of the focus is on not fucking up.

In that vein, two common fuck-ups that have come up often in discussions my buddies and I had when evaluating summer analysts and 1st years, and what to do instead:

1) analyzing some material and discovering a problem. This will just annoy people. On the other hand, discovering a problem AND solving it will impress, and people will start imagining you being useful on their team.

2) eagerly taking on work, returning it quickly, only for your 3rd year analyst or 1st year associate to find it has numerous mistakes. Then, when having the mistakes explained to you, you say you've understood and don't ask questions. Then it turns out that you haven't understood and the mistakes are still there. This will really annoy people and you'll develop a reputation for being motivated but unreliable. Most tasks are not complicated, so be very focused, methodical, check your work. And don't pretend you've understood; ask until you've understood. Then prove it with the work.

Good luck!

9-digit PnL. The powers that be said I took on too much risk and to please the man upstairs and in DC, they had to make a point of giving me a lower bonus to show that incentives were in the right place. I quit in a rage and splurged that underwhelming bonus on hookers, blow, and an MBA.

No, for real, I wasn't in Trading (except one super short rotation) - I was in Sales/Structuring.

Hi there,

To be brutally honest, I did not encounter any Simon or Wisconsin MBAs in my recruiting experiences with investment banks. This is exclusively for FO; might be different for some Risk, Ops or Finance positions.

In general, I have heard of Simon discussed more often than Wisconsin. I recall it has a very good faculty and some prominent alumni.

Good luck!

Hi Michael-Cohen,

Crap - I thought I had written a response here.

If I've understood you correctly, you are about to head into your last UG summer internship in Corporate Strategy; you didn't seem to like IBD that much; and you have one full-time recruiting season left.

The rational choice seems to be either get a return offer from your summer or do consulting recruiting.

I recommend against the MBB-or-Bust mentality. MBB is the most established/prestigious as a general rule, but you can still get the toolkit and plenty of career options from the "Tier 2" firms (I don't like that moniker) or the Big 4 strategy arms.