Fresh LSE Graduate with No Experience - Advice Needed

Hi all,

I graduated from LSE with a First Class Honours in BSc Economics.
I don't have any experience in IB or finance in general because I went through a series of very unfortunate circumstances.

Basically, during university for the last 3 years, 3 of my family members became critically ill and required FT care. I had to care for them throughout my university and I was stay at home as much as possible because my father had to leave for work so it was onto me to care for them. This meant I couldn't join any clubs or societies or anything because I wasn't on campus for nearly all of my time there.
I naturally couldn't leave for internships either. 

I have basically a very good degree and a very good story on how resilient I am. That's it.

I am still caring for my mum as of right now. It has eased up a lot on me however because my father can now WFH.
This has been a recent development in the last 2 weeks so now I have been looking around to apply for jobs. I have wanted to break into finance but reading the forums on here and Reddit, it seems that unfortunately the ship might have sailed for me.

I thought rather than reading however and feeling down, I would just ask on here and see if people could maybe help me or give me some advice on what to do.
I am applying for normal schemes and jobs but, I would like to work in IB because I know I am smart enough for and can handle it.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

3 Comments
 

Sorry to hear about your circumstances.

Frankly, you don't have a whole lot of options right now. I'd personally be looking at two things:

  1. Join a big 4 firm. They will take anybody off the street for an audit grad programme, particularly an LSE grad. You could then do the classic internal transfer route of audit --> transaction services/M&A --> exit to IB. That being said, given you've already graduated I'm not sure if you'll be eligible? 

2. Do a top masters. If you have the money, consider doing a top msc (oxford, HEC, LBS) and try to re-recruit for summers and off cycles. However, this is quite risky given you have no experience and you may end up in the same situation next year, this time £50k+ in debt. An MSc won't make up for your lack of experience but it can give you a second shot at internship recruiting

Best of luck

 

To add to the above: Big4 firms recruit up to two years after you have graduated and are still recruiting now, so you are definitely able to go that way. Think MSc would be super risky given the cost + most people doing those programmes are a few internships in and want to rerecruit/did not convert. 

 

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