Starting Out in Back Office
I will be beginning a 2 year risk rotation program at a BB next month. I hoped to get credit or market risk but have been assigned operational/compliance risk for the next year. How can I make sure not to get stuck in back office? I am interested in commercial/corporate banking, corporate finance, wealth management etc, anything more finance related. Considering moving after a year if another opportunity comes along especially since the 2nd rotation may or may not be what I want. Degree and internship were finance related, went to a non target state school.
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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:
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.
Did you do this internally? And no one gave you crap about it?
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