May 25, 2023

Ways to market myself from FDD/TAS background into Credit/Private Credit

Currently a Senior Associate CPA at a MM accounting firm in Financial Due Diligence, and wanting to make a switch in roles before I get too pigeonholed into FDD/accounting. I have a year's experience in FP&A as well.

I realize it will be challenging given my background, but I do believe there are a lot of transferrable skills into roles relating to credit/private credit. Going to be doing a lot of self study and perfecting my financial modeling skills, but is there anything you think I should definitely stress or focus on as being a strength given my background during interviews that would increase my chances? I think strengths include large data set manipulation/analysis, knowing the ins and outs of P&L's/financial statements and how they interact with each other, and financial analysis and diligence report writing on buy-side targets and sell-side clients.

Also, open to your thoughts if there are other similar roles I should be targeting instead given my background. Trying to target roles like credit/private credit, direct lending, Operation Due Diligence over investments, and asset management.

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

I have mostly worked in M&A, not on the credit side, so my thoughts may not be the most relevant but I think focusing on your financial statement knowledge and your dd reports experience is the best way to present yourself.

You're a CPA who has been doing fdd/tas. Being able to read the financials is important for any of those types of credit roles. That is a genuine plus for you. Likewise, those diligence reports are good experience. That will be the type of work that you'd be doing on the credit side. There will be differences of course but it definitely is useful. Make sure you use your accounting knowledge and your dd report experience to articulate how you identified a discrepancy and how it led to things like keeping the buyer from overleveraging the asset/was able to add more leverage than initially expected/etc. While I am sure you already knew this, that's a small, partial, list of the type of ways you can articulate this experience in a way that is relevant for credit. While maybe not ideal, your background can certainly be competitive. Just know that people basically get one "get out of jail free" card in the interview process. Your background basically uses it up. You pretty much need to ace everything else to get those type of credit roles. 

 

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