Career Advice for 24yo who will be in FP&A
Hello!
So I recently accepted an offer for a Finance Analyst role at a healthcare startup. I am passionate about the healthcare industry since I was pre-med during undergraduate but decided to switch out of medicine last minute. The role seems very much like a typical FP&A role but the CFO told me that my role and the team would be crucial in making strategical decisions for the startup. What he said really appealed to me because I am more interested in strategy than reporting lol.
My question is what kind of career path should I take? To be quite honest, I think corporate strategy appeals to me the most out of all the career paths people typically follow. From what I understand, most people go to business school and then either go do MBB consulting or investment banking and then try to go PE/corp dev roles. Would business school be the best option for me? The comp for my new job as an analyst is ~$100K, so I'm not sure if the Biz-school ROI is that great, given potential raises/promotions/changing jobs.
I also just took the CFA Level 1 exam in July. Think I did well on it, but I'll see in September. I read that the CFA designation is only useful if you are in asset management already; however, I will still take the other two exams because I genuinely enjoy learning the material (yeah I know I have no life haha). I am also pretty experienced in both SQL and Python, but I am not interested in data analyst roles because it doesn't seem interesting to me.
Overall, I am pretty lost about would be the best path for me. I have always followed the pre-med path (volunteering, shadowing, research, MCAT, etc.) so now I feel like I am wandering around aimlessly. Any advice would be immensely helpful. Thanks!
Hey lider203, the following topics might be helpful:
More suggestions...
You're welcome.
Bump
don't use "strategical" in conversation
You could always do a few years and then try to pivot over as an analyst to MBB if you wanted to explore corporate strategy/consulting roles. It's quite feasible at the post-undergrad level, and personally, still quite palatable because you'll only be ~24-25 and still very early in your career.
Really? I had the impression that you have to network to the partner level to even get an interview.
Bump.
Making the switch from AN2 in IB to this type of corporate finance FP&A job with a startup and wanted to see if this would be a good switch or if it's just going to set me back career wise.
If you are going into a startup, make sure you get equity or a path to it. The salary is nice but as someone who did the start up thing (First Wave Hire -> Executive over 6.5 years), you end up killing yourself so you need to make sure you get upside of it. How big is the firm?
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