Hi. This is a rising senior who at a top 25 college with a 3.3 GPA (yea very low..) I'll be interning at FP&A team for an IT company. Although I'll be doing FP&A, I have very big aspirations of doing more finane related tasks in financial institutions such as corporate bankings or Big 4 advisory.
What are some options that I can go from this FP&A experience to Full Time job opportunities?
You can go into any other corporate finance role (ie. treasurey, corp strat, etc.) except maybe corp dev. In the corporate path you're also a good candidtae for top FLDPS. If you network well enough, you can get into some better big 4 advisory groups. Note that those advisory groups are not all the same on the prestige ladder. Can probably get commercial banking, maybe some risk groups. At the larger, more established banks you're gonna have a hard time getting a more desireable role unless your network is top notch and you get lucky since they pull from their summer analyst classes and rarely have full time open slots for new full time hires.
Thank you very much for your input. I really, truly appreciate it. In terms of networking, I don't think my skills are top notch nor is my GPA, so realisitcally I will have to let go of more prestige banks. As of FLDPS, I will defnitnely look into applying to big companies with the program.
Also, you've mentioned commerical banks and big 4 advisory. Which division, or team can I specifically look into with the skills from this internship? (FP&A). I'd really appreciate your two-cents here.
It depends on what you do in FP&A. If you're in a project finance/forecasting/IR/M&A focused role within FP&A you'll have more tranferrable skills to high finance work. But I would honestly doubt that you'll get that exposure since its typically left to more senior people. If I had to guess you'll be working on reporting/analysis/variance analysis. Digging into things that your manager got questions on and gives you to work on, putting together leadership deck slides, etc.
If the latter is the case, I'm not sure if FP&A will "help" you move in to a certain group. However, what it will do is give you your company's stamp of approval, tick a box, etc. that you are a capable young professional. Then its up to you to network your way into interviews for groups you're interested in and impress those folks to get your full time offer.
Although, I'm thinking about this now. Most itnernships, even at the IBs, don't really give you transferrable skills. They're all just recruiting pipelines or "stamps of approval" that you met a certain threshold to get that internship. So, my advice is to absolutely kill your internship, get a fantastic rec, and network hard starting yesterday. Also, do more research into jobs you want.
Quick tip, google "site:www.wallstreetoasis.com big 4 advisory" to quickly look through any posts on WSO that reference "big 4 advisory". Use this search method to look at other jobs/career paths. I'm pretty sure I saw your post in r/financialcareers but you can use this search method there as well since reddit's search sucks.
I'll definitely look in to it. Thank you very much! In terms of networking, should I reach out to alumni from our school who holds jobs of my interest?
the low gpa is going to hurt you. best to consider tier ii firms and do your best to be a start at those firms best you can.
Which firms are you referring to as Tier II?
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