Career Path Questions
As a student entering his fourth and final year of undergrad at a respected, but not Ivy league or particularly prestigious school, I have some questions about continuity and possibility of my career path. My first order of business is to maintain or improve my GPA which is slightly 3.5+ for the remaining year. I am going to graduate with a bachelor's degree in finance.
Roughly, I plan to spend the first two to three years out of college as an analyst at the best management consulting firm that will give me an offer, willing to put in the grunt hours, spend lots of time traveling to clients etc. I then plan to study like hell to achieve a GMAT score of 700+ and hopefully be accepted into a top 10 MBA program.
The next stage - post MBA - is where I have my first question. As my goal is to start out as a management consulting analyst, I love pure finance as well and would like to be hired into an IB associate position after receiving my MBA. My question - is it possible to be hired to an Investment Banking Associate position with a top 10 MBA but management consulting experience, rather than IB analyst experience pre-MBA? Has this been done on a consistent basis before?
I also would like to understand the performance structure of IB Associate bonuses - are they strictly based on the number of deals you make? What specific criteria are looked at by management that show that you really shine at what you do?
I then plan to spend a few years at the associate level, then transition to something like Venture Capital, PE, or general executive level at an industry corporation.
Does anything in this career path disjoint? Is it possible to be hired as an associate IB after experience at perhaps a MBB or other elite consulting firm?
Any help will be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
You can definitely move into IB post-MBA with consulting experience.
If you know that ultimately you would prefer Ibanking then why spend 3 years in consulting? It seems that either you feel that you have a better chance with an entry level job in consulting, or that you just want the pay check from Ibanking...
If you come from a top MBA program (M7) you could have majored in women's studies in undergrad and then pursued fine art sales for 3 years and still get an offer from a top tier BB as an associate right out of B-school.
PE/VC/HF jobs are more difficult to get without prior relevant experience but not impossible esp. if you are coming from Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, etc.
Not sure why you would pursue MC if you ultimately want to be a banker unless your goal is to skip the analyst phase of the process.
Um, its actually not easy to get an offer at MBB out of undergrad. In fact, you'd have a much, much better chance at a BB, especially given the much larger number of entry-level positions available.
If you want go into finance eventually, you're better off getting into finance now. If you're goal is to get into a Top 5 business school quickly, then you should look at consulting.
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