Starting Out in Back Office

I’d go out of the company and look for LMM/MM IB. Was in the same boat as you, but for SA, and wanted to get out. Recruiters at the company gave me a bunch of fluff about how, after the 2 years, I could move out. This is a lie.

I’d recommend the following:

Prep: back office work is not financial at all. I did compliance risk (and it’s very well possible at the firm you are talking about) and never looked at a financial model. Even worse, I was comp risk for wealth management, so I was doing almost the worst back office role for the least well respected front office division. However, you get TIME. I worked, maybe, 15-20 collective weekly hours and my floor was 80% empty. My boss was remote so I spent a lot of my day doing the following:

1. Reading research by the company (all employees got it for free)

2. Sent dozens of networking emails a day. People tend to not want to ignore emails by those they work with

3. Financial modeling/technical prep

4. Finding firms and groups I liked and developed stock pitch/behavioral answers

This really helped for me

Don’t square the circle: let’s say there is a slim chance you can go front office, don’t make a big fit right now. Your recruiters will not be empathetic because, even if true, you can’t say back office is bad work. To the company, at least facially, everyone is valuable. So, for now, don’t voice a desire to move because the 2 year programs are just that. However, do try to get a better second rotation.

Don’t fail now: even if you hate your job, if you can’t cut it filing out forms (which is like half of compliance) you will not cut it in IB. You need to make sure you convince your peers you are very good and a spotless record at your current position is needed.

One year masters: if all else fails, do one of these. It’ll give you a reset and bring you back into OCR.

Hope this helped. Feel free to PM if you want to chat more.