Should I Leave Banking?
I am a post-mba associate and have been on the desk a little over a year, and have realized that banking is not for me long term. I have always loved finance and following the markets so went the IB route as I thought it would be the best place to start. What I’ve realized is that deals don’t excite me in the slightest. The group I am in does almost all m&a and I am miserable.
I am starting to think about what the next move is and how long I should stick it out. I’ve thought about private banking, buyside public markets, product management for an asset manager, s&t if I could find something outside of nyc, and even pivoting to consulting to broaden my exit ops. Am I crazy to leave at the 1.5 year mark or does it make sense? Would it be worth staying another year?
I've said this elsewhere too in the forums: if you do not intend to be a banker in the long term, 1.5 years (or after your first non-stub bonus) is the best time to leave, in fact the sooner the better. Another year is not going to get you any meaningful reps beyond what you already have, and it is going to stop you from doing what you are truly passionate about.
I can't talk about private banking, buyside, public markets, etc- but this is something you need to decide for yourself: do you want to be in finance in the long term? What are your key skills? How do you imagine your career going down in the next 10-15 years? (you don't have to be accurate about this, but have some sort of clarity on what this entails).
For consulting: I'm not particularly sold on the idea of doing consulting after 1.5 years in banking. The handful of people I know made that transition after their stub period and maybe one person that left for consulting after more than a year of banking. Usually, people leave consulting after 2 years, so the only time you'd make that transition after banking is if you want to stay in consulting long term and progress through the ranks. If your ultimate goal is to do something beyond consulting, you are better off using your banking experience to make that pivot (even if its a different role than the ideal one but its always easy to move internally within a company).
Bump
If it’s not what you want then why stay? I recently left and only wanted to leave for the right opportunity where I could see myself stay 3-5 years. The process of finding the perfect gig for me took about 6-8 months, which gave another good chunk of experience and put me at almost 2 years on my resume. For me, the best way to explore paths was just starting to take interviews and talk to people, that’s really the best way to figure out what you may want to do.
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