I was just wondering what you all recommend in terms of prep before my FT position starts in July. I have been doing a BIWS Excel course and purchased the WSO PE guide to get a head start on PE recruiting. What else should I do and how much do most people prep their senior year? Thank you!
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So much of what you do is about what your higher up employees want to see. There’s no way to know what type of slide designs they like or anything like that.
Honestly, just enjoy the time off before it all starts. You will be underwater with work for basically 1.5 years no matter how much prep you have, no reason to start early.
EXCEPT for the SIE and series 79 if your firms wants you to take those. If you majored in finance you should be able to take the SIE after 2-3 weeks of barely studying
x2...The only thing you'd need to look at for the SIE are the laws/regulations.
Thanks so much! I did major in finance. Any suggestions on courses/books for SIE prep down the line?
I thought Achievable was great because it had unlimited practice tests and practice methods that adapted to what you need to work on, also works well on your phone. FINRA has 1 practice test on their website which you need to take since the way the test is given is so different from any test prep you use. There’s also so much memorization involved, no intuition or raw intellect will help you know how long investment managers need to have formal complaints in their system. Practice, practice, practice.
I did the BIWS powerpoint course before entering as an analyst and it was definitely helpful. You can learn very good tips to help you build powerpoint slides much faster.
Thank you so much
I was asking the same question before starting... the only real answer is that your home prep will be useless compared to firm training and mentoring, so you’d better fly off to Bali and enjoy some holidays while you can. If I were you, I would even fly to Bali now (or Cuba or Palawan or whatever dream location you have in mind) and finish the year remotely if you can.
I'm going to be a summer associate this year, is there any point in brushing up on PPT? By brushing up I mean I've never attended marketing type classes where it was used.
Analysts below you will respect you more if you know how to open powerpoint and work well with it. It will also save you a lot of time because you will have to do slides at some point (even MDs open powerpoint sometimes). I just checked the price of the BIWS course and it is more expensive than I remembered, but it will definitely give you a head start against your peers. No need to spend a lot of time doing all the exercises but there are 19h of video that are really helpful. You just have to spend 1h for 20 days ahead of your internship, you can perfectly to that from Bali or Cuba.
For transparency: I am not related to BIWS in any way, I am just a former customer who thought that their course was helpful.
Thanks for the response. I actually see it listed on TTS for like $75 or something, I may bite on that one. PPT kind of slipped my mind because I really enjoy using excel, used it in all my prior roles so I'm pretty proficient. I think consistent TTS really helped out as well, my firm gave us most of their financial modeling stuff and I've been using the live classes on occasion too. I think that the incremental shortcuts have started to add up.
Think you're totally right about needing to be on point with PPT (no pun). No reason to have shitty formatting or move slowly in a program that simple. On the travel front, I'm in MIA and it is 10/10. Looking forward to my firm letting us know it is remote so I can stay :)
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