Is an unpaid full time IB job ever worth it?

Friend recently got an offer as a full time IB analyst at a no-name shop but with no base and pay based on deals closing. Is this ever worth taking? If it makes any difference, the firm does a lot of capital markets work.

14 Comments
 

I doubt this would be "real IB hours" since, from the website, the firm closes only a few deals a year.

 

Only with serious due diligence... firms operating like this can be super sketchy and close like 1 tiny deal every 3 years. Talk to anyone you can find on LinkedIn who used to work there and see what the deal is, but you could be left with a lot of hours and no income. Probably better off negotiating for a small base or looking elsewhere.

 

If they can't afford to pay full time analysts base salary, I can't imagine their deal flow is good enough for variable pay to be lucrative, or even livable. Think about it, if they are willing to do this, then they must think for sure its less than what a regular base salary would be, so at best you might make a normal base but at worst you make literally nothing.

 

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