Climbing the Ivory Tower: 1st year Analyst Lateral into BB
Greetings WSO, looking for advice from the salty monkeys out there:
Short Term Objective: Lateral into MM / BB
Long Term Objective: MM or MF PE
Context:
I am a first-year analyst at a MM boutique doing M&A in the tech / software space looking to lateral into a top MM or BB as soon as possible. Willing to explore alternative solutions, see below.
Background: Graduated from non-target liberal arts school, internship experience in corp dev / IB.
The ask: Worth making the jump?
If no:
1. Deficiencies: How can I improve? MBA to compensate for non-target school?
2. Not worth the setback: Do I stay in MM and lateral into MM tech PE?
If yes:
1. Thoughts on likelihood of successful conversion.
2. Timing on hiring and networking.
a.) Ideally networking 6months out from interview date(s)
3. Advice on preparation? Not interested in generalized comments.
Ask me anything: Willing to answer questions and I might be able to help those poor bastards at non-targets. Shoot.
wtf is this nerdy post. Relax bro it's not a call notes that my VP always ask to circulate but noone reads anyway.
Says the guy who's up at 4AM on WSO. Wyd guy.
Apparently US is the only country in the world according to GhengisKong
MBA is not worth it to get to BB IB, and you can't use an MBA to get from IB to PE. Scratch the MBA entirely.
You are way overthinking the non-target thing. Get 8 months to a year of experience at the MM and lateral to a BB or EB. Start networking in early summer next year (may be able to just apply and not network, btw) and look to transition around August. You can't transfer before that because you won't have enough experience, but will be a fairly seamless jump given you're already in tech. Once at the BB, start looking for off-cycle PE. It will almost definitely not be MF PE given timing, but MM and UMM are possible and you can move up from there if you must have MF PE.
Why can’t you use the MBA?
You can definitely get to IB from MBA, but it's mostly people with several years experience in an unrelated career. For someone already in IB and looking to upgrade firms it's a huge waste of time and money. You can go up the ladder to MM or BB easily once you have the IB experience, regardless of firm.
As for IB -> PE in case that was your question, you can't get to PE post-MBA without having done PE pre-MBA, there are just way too many people with PE experience doing the MBA and you can't compete with someone who already has experience
Yeah I was wondering once I get into at a very small firm trying to get to a BB eventually
Would you say it’s better to lateral up, or maybe do like a startup type thing, then MBA down the road, and then IB?
You should start a new thread, this thread is 6+ months old
that said you can easily go tiny firm -> MM firm -> BB/EB. MBA is for a complete career switch. lots of accountants, engineers, former sales guys etc - they needed it to break into IB at all.
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