Good morning all,
I've spent a lot of time on this site, and asked quite a few questions myself, so I figured I'd do my part to give back by answering any questions you might have about corporate finance or fldps in general.
A little about myself: 2nd yr FLDP (1.5 yrs in) at a F500 in Chicago. I'm currently at the end of my 2nd of 3 rotations.
My plan is to try to end up in a FP&A or operations finance role around graduating the program in May, and then work a few yrs before pursuing an MBA.
No problem.
I don't do any budgeting or billing. I doubt you'll find FLDPs doing billing, but I may be wrong. At the plant level we have clerks responsible for AR & AP. For me personally, the budgeting is handled by the Controller and the department heads.
Some of the things I regularly do at the plant include: forecasting, variance analysis, consolidations/roll-ups, accounting (JEs, acct recs, etc), cost analysis, margin analysis, and other ad hoc projects. Our accounting manager left this summer and has yet to be replaced, so I have picked up most of her responsibilities as well.
My projects largely revolve around showing financial metrics in different presentations for management, creating new reports to track different metrics, etc. I recently just created an entirely new financial package for our plant financials/results.
Not necessarily. It just depends how good you are as networking. To move up from the manager level you need to have some strong connections pulling for you, while continuing to be a high performer. The advantage that former FLDPs have is that they know more people, probably have more people pulling for them, etc. If you come in from the outside and are a high performer & good at networking you won't be at much of a disadvantage once you get established. You can't expect to hit the ground killing it right away though.
I'm not sure if there is any sort of ceiling, but it seems that most, if not all, of upper-level mgmt have one. The way it works in my company is that an MBA means you need less years of experience to be eligible for certain positions. For example, an internal job posting might say 5 yrs experience or MBA and 3 yrs of experience required. In my company a CPA or MBA are often preferred for roles starting at manager and above.
I generally work 45-55 hours a week, just depending on the week. In general, you don't necessarily work more at higher levels. (excluding c-level) I'd say most managers & directors work 50-55 hrs a week in finance at my company. It's usually more lax in summer, around holidays, etc. It's often expected that you work the hours that your group/manager works.
Company as a whole hasn't been performing well recently. We'll see how this shapes out in the near future. For the program, I wish we had a strategy rotation.
Mostly questions to assess your fit and to hear more about your experiences. Also had basic accounting questions, NWC case, and a basic excel test. I don't, sorry.
Some rough estimates (Highly variable past manager due to bonus) FLDP (50-60k)(10%) ->FA (60-70k)(10%) -> SFA (65-90k)(15%) -> Manager/Controller (80-130k)(15/20%) -> Director (130-250k)(25%)-> VP (200-400K) -> SVP (400k+) -> CFO(800K+)