Moving to IB from consulting
Hey everyone - long time lurker and reader - but now I would kindly ask for your advice :)
I am currently at MBB 2nd year in Europe and would like to transition to IB (UK/Netherlands). I have educational background in engineering & energy - I have considered doing banking before but due to my background it was difficult to secure a position and demonstrate enough affinity for finance so I decided to pursue consulting first as it was a much more feasible option.
My understanding is that this would be achieved the easiest via an MBA (i.e LBS) however that would imply another year or two of consulting + 2 years of MBA for a minimum of 3 years from today to reach post MBA associate level + most likely 150kE in the hole as well in terms of tuition and living expenses + opportunity cost of not working for 2 years.
I believe it would be much better to achieve the transition without an MBA, implying that I would be hired as an analyst and would take roughly 2-3 years to reach the same level I would get with an MBA but at that point I would have a) significantly better skillset as a post MBA associate b) no debt c) more money overall due to better paychecks from IB + no opportunity cost d) potentially other options such as PE that I might end up considering (which I would foresee to be a bit difficult via MBA route even coming from MBB)
I've already started networking, having calls with some people in IB or consultants who used to be in IB + going through IB prep material as I have little financial background and no DD experience in consulting - I foresee the most difficult part of the journey is to secure the interviews. I suppose I should focus as much as possible on networking as applying randomly on websites will not lead to anything.
What do you think is my likelihood of success? I am not overly happy with consulting anyway and dont think I would improve my skillset much in the next year or two as I keep doing random / very different projects that are not even in industries I am interested in so I feel like its a waste of time anyway.
Would appreciate any thoughts from anyone has made a similar switch in the past (happy to also discuss it through PM), what should be my dos and don'ts and what would you dear WSO community suggest?
I've only been an intern in IB, VC, and PE so I am by no means the best qualified to answer your questions. However, I am interested in moving towards consulting and away from finance so I did find your post interesting and will do my best to provide some input.
1. From what I've heard, most full-time first-year analyst positions are filled from internship conversions. The direct full-time hires are very few and I suppose that they are often from people with solid IB experience (did a few internships at other IBs but wanted to be at another bank for whatever reason). That gives you a more difficult starting point.
2. Times in IB are not great right now. Just look at the number of available positions for analysts with experience during the last few months and compare that to 6-12 months ago. I have heard of several banks (regional) which were not even able to convert interns due to low deal flow and a lot of full-times coming in from previous intern cohorts. With that said, I believe there will be even fewer full-time positions than usual and that banks will prioritize converting high-performing interns.
3. I think the most important part is to get your story straight. You didn't study finance. It also seems that you haven't had any internships in finance and that you haven't really worked with anything related to finance/deals. People will wonder why you all of a sudden have become interested in IB. I think that the best would be if you could find something related to your current work. Maybe you worked on the operational implementation of an acquisition, got some exposure to people involved in the deal and became really interested in IB.
I don't think it is impossible by any means, but I do think that it will be much more difficult than the standard internship --> full-time route, especially when your prior experience is not in finance. I would highly recommend networking. It gives you really good insights and people are usually very helpful. I've sent cold messages to plenty of people on Linkedin and set up calls. In many cases, they have offered to flag my CV and get me into the process, even though we have no prior connection.
thanks, appreciate the response!
Nice
Are you dead set on banking?
Not sure about Europe, but in the US it would be easier to move to an associate role in PE at a firm that hires from MBB than it would be to find an entry level banking role.
You will fit naturally into some PE recruiting pipelines, whereas for banking you’d be a very non traditional hire. You would also get tenure for your consulting experience.
Very prestigious PE firms will hire MBB consultants as a part of their normal talent pool
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