B4 Audit or straight to IB
I have an offer to start in Big 4 Audit (South Florida) in October. My plan is to transfer into Transaction Services after 2 years then eventually transfer out of the firm into a financial analyst role, possibly even investment banking. I recently was contacted about a position in investment banking (not sure about the size of the firm). I know I do not want to be in "accounting" forever and am considering finding out more about this role. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I took a similar path to the one you're thinking of. Did a couple years in B4 audit then transferred to TAS. I really enjoy the TAS work and it's definitely a pretty good mix of interesting work/decent pay/work life balance. I'm currently applying to business schools and plan to transfer to IB post B-school. I haven't done much extensive searching but I have reached out to a few banks about coming on directly from TAS. In my experience, the difficulty is that you're a bit of a tweener in that you're too experienced to come on as an analyst but they don't want to hire you as an associate without previous banking experience. I'm sure if I did more extensive searching/networking I could find a good fit but my plan was always to go to B school anyways.
My two cents would be that if you want to do banking, do it now. It's much easier to go from banking to TAS or a financial analyst role than vice versa.
If I were to not going into B4 Audit, would you recommend trying to get a financial analyst or investment banking position? Also, what are the differences? Don't large investment banks hire a lot of financial analysts?
"Financial Analyst" is usually a sexier way of saying accountant. I'm sure there are some outliers but most financial analysts are doing glorified bookkepping. Yes there are a lot of financial analysts at banks but they're doing back office stuff and aren't investment bankers in the sense that they're not working on deals.
If you really are passionate about IB, I would recommend doing 1 year of B4 Audit then networking to land a good IB Analyst position. I am in B4 and am in the process of finishing the CPA exam before potentially moving to IB, but from what I have seen TASdevil above is exactly correct. Going into TAS definitely makes you a tweener and you may even have to settle for an Analyst role if you want to lateral into IB after. It's your decision so do what you are most passionate about.
I would explore the potential IB opportunity even if you accept the audit offer. You should always opt for the route with the least hurdles, and boutique IB > MM and potentially BB/EB is much easier and definitely less time consuming than audit>TAS>IB.
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