Advice/Help

Hi all!

29yo - working for 2 years in an easily identifiable American company with a research arm (covering European telcos) albeit this is not my employer’s main business (main business is rather data). Have studied in good universities( one of the red brick) but not Ivy League ones and am based in London.

The work we do here is not rigorous at all and the research we curate aims to simply outline what the realized interim/annual results were vs guidance or consensus. In those 2 years I have learned lots but on the other hand this is the amount I would have learned if I were in any of an investment bank’s research team for 6 months. It feels and it is widely discussed that seniors join the company after more intensive careers to have a bette work life balance (here one analyst doesn’t have to be in the office before 8/9am even during the earnings period). Progression is slow to non existent, pay is moderate and bonus is pocket money (7-8% of base salary).

How on earth can I get from a bank a real front office position and start meaningfully engage with clients after having this experience?

Sounds difficult, is it also impossible? Are there any advices?

3 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Sounds like you work at Bloomberg or Refinitiv or Morning star as a research associate. You’re not going to be able to engage with client right away even if you make a move to an investment banks. You’ll need to leverage your data expertise and lateral as soon as you can. It’s a dead end job at those firms to be a research associate/ analyst without prior sell side / buyside experience. That said, I’ve seen plenty of people made a successful move after 1-2 years of experience to investment bank as an associate and later on to buyside seats. You just need to lateral as soon as you can.

 

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