Was wondering how easy is it to transition from one industry to another working in CorpFin (Senior Financial Analyst, FP&A, Financial Manager, etc). Specifically from real estate to other industries such as consumer goods, tech, entertainment. Do recruiters expect you to be an expert within your preferred field? Is real estate niche and pigeonhole me?
Would love to hear about peoples opinions and/or experiences of people making these kinds of changes.
Your industry matters more the higher you get, but I mean much higher than you're probably guessing.
You are rarely going to see a tech CFO move over to a utility company- at the CFO level, resume optics matter a lot, so you typically stay in or very near your swimlane. At the VP level it is similar- you see some movement across industries, but still to tangential industries such as CPG to retailers or to other marketing heavy industries. At the Director level it is optimal/helpful to have an industry background, but you still see people jump all over the place.
At every level below that, I would call it a non-factor. It could be that manufacturing wants more of a cost accounting background that you didn't get in real estate, but that is an experience gap more than an industry gap and is likely more of a factor for that specific role rather than that company/industry.
I see what you’re saying. Just to give you a little more color on my current situation
I have worked as a FA in RE in the past and recently graduated from MBA at 27y/o. Job market sucks and the best I’ve done in an interview is for a FA role at a PE RE fund. I feel like I have to take what I can get and hope the market gets better in a year or so and then make the jump to an industry I enjoy more. Def won’t be around long enough to make it to VP so based on what you just said to me, I can make that jump
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