Title sums it up, currently finishing up my first year in SS research and was wondering what’s the minimum amount of work experience SM or MM funds want to see before considering candidates for interviews
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Move when you're ready and can make $$. 2-3 years seems to be common in my office
It really depends on your ramp and, more importantly, when you feel you’re ready to take on risk.
You’re one year in so you should still be climbing the learning curve. What are your answers to the following questions:
1. How often are you talking to clients? — 1yr in I was talking to clients 4 days a week (calls, meetings, going out with sales)
2. Are you the team’s expert on a few names? — I took on a subsector no one on the team had capacity for
3. How many coverage initiations have you worked on? — worked on 2 IPOs my first year. Got a new analyst and launched 15 names as well.
4. How many unique deep dives have you worked on? — we did one deep dive a quarter, I did 3 my first year.
Now despite having a great analyst, strong buy side relationships, and a ton of responsibility in my early 20s I ended up staying on the sell side for 3+ yrs.
I started looking for exits after 2yrs but it took a while to find the right one. Ended up being VC, but was almost going to take an MM offer instead.
Moral of the story: just because you’re looking doesn’t mean you’ll find the next opp quickly. Focus on getting as much as you can out of your experience, get a mentor, and only make a jump if it’s a big step up.
What type of tasks were most transferable / useful for you once you made the leap? Also, any practices or habits that you wished you would have done on the sell-side?
I'll gear it towards HF since that's what you're looking for. I interned for a year at an MM before going into SS ER so take this all with a heap of salt.
Most Transferable Skills:
Things I wish I got more of:
I would love to hear how you got to talk to clients 1 year into sell-side, was this straight out of UG or from another job? how do you show your analyst that you’re learning and ramping on names quick without being a pesk?
This was straight out of undergrad. I was in a unique situation where it was a team of 4 covering 36 names and the Analyst was a big proponent of having everyone be able to talk about all the names. He was a "marketing" analyst so he was on the road so much that he relied on the associates to field calls with non-T1 clients. I didn't see him in person until 6 weeks into the job.
I didn't actually ask to do it, he made me take client calls solo the day I passed the series exams. It was very much a trial by fire but that's what helped me climb the learning curve really quickly.
Unfortunately the bank ended up replacing him with a different, well known analyst, and I was absorbed onto that team. The new analyst had us get more ownership on specific names and within 2 months in the seat he sent me to lead the initiation for a European company that was IPOing. So he sent me to Europe by myself to attend the roadshow and spend time with management and then had me draft up the initiation. At this point I had 9 months of experience.
Later when we caught up he told me he didn't realize I was just 23 and assumed I was more experienced since I had been taking calls already.
TL;DR -- I got forced to take calls as soon as I passed my series exams and it got me to ramp in 6 months.
How would I advocate for this today? I'd be super strategic about it so you're managing up effectively.
This shows that you're focused on helping them leverage their time and are being proactive about client interaction to drive your ramp.
I have a different perspective. I took the first buy side offer I got after a year and a half doing SS ER. While I’m at a sub $1B fund in AUM, I can absolutely say I’ve learned so so much more and probably know some of my names better than my old boss did. You learn so much more when you get more names on the buy side and think from the perspective of a risk taker.
Nice! It sounds like you were ready to take on risk earlier than me. I wouldn't advocate waiting 3+ years since at a certain point it's hard to break down bad SS habits and you're more expensive than someone with 1-2yr SS experience.
For the sake of the thread -- What was the steepest part of your learning curve when you moved over? Covering so many names, positioning, etc.?
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