Wharton Student - Seeking Advice
Hi everyone, I’m a rising sophomore at Wharton looking for advice on what to recruit for.
I eventually want to work in a HF (Fundamental SM L/S or LO, not too interested in pods because of job safety) or at a LO AM. I have no interest in working in anything transactional (PE, PC, IB) long term. Based on this, what would be the best pathway for me to follow out of undergrad? Thanks!
Don't you have career advisors you could talk to? Or upperclassmen?
Most people just recommend IB I don’t understand the point if I don’t want to do PE
Wharton alum here
The reason most buyside jobs do not hire undergrads is b/c they do not have training and expect people to come in knowing basic finance toolkit (how to model, how to read 10q/k, business fundamentals). Only a few PE funds and the pods have analyst roles for this reason and even still the training is less robust than starting at a bank
If you know you want to do HF and want to avoid transaction work, you can also do equity research - they hire a ton into HF as well and will teach you the skillset needed. Can look into sales and trading too, but that is a different skillset
Thank you, very helpful. Equity research seems interesting but I was under the assumption that only pods hired from it (unless I am mistaken)?
Also, would it be easy to exit from equity research even if you aren’t in a top ranked team?
Unfortunately am in PE so not as much knowledge on HF. I would get linkedin premium and make a list of all LO / SM LS firms you are interested in, and list exactly where their employees came from, that would give you a sense of what the best path out of undergrad is. I am assuming most did banking but I bet there are a few who took other routes.
If you know you want to do the LO / SM LS job, you could also look for a smaller / less well known fund and try to go directly.
Will do, thanks!!
Join WITG and apply to SSG/Global Macro/TMT. Attend all the WITG Accelerator sessions. Start doing pitch competitions immediately. Once you start winning, you can cold email your pitches to HFs asking for internships. Keep an eye out on the listserv for sophomore summer internships at SM’s and apply to as many as possible. For reference, the most cracked kids usually work at some, successful (but often smaller) SM their sophomore year (Long Path, Maverick, Valley Forge, Matrix, Starboard, Scopia, Finepoint, Hawk Ridge, RCG).
You’re still a freshman, so you don’t know this; but the reason most tell you to do IB/PE is because you unfortunately secure you’re job in sophomore spring (you get your junior year internship which will convert to FT). However, most hedge funds do not follow this structured path. As a result, most of the kids (incl. the ones w internships and returns at above HF’s) would rather the security of a job like IB/PE + the opportunity to recruit to one of the huge respected HFs within 2 years (Baupost, Viking, Lone Pine, etc.) over rolling the dice out of undergrad. Especially given the uncertainty of HFs and lack of standardized training, headhunters for bigger roles have a preference for IB/PE experience over a small SM hedge fund. This is not to say it’s not possible, just harder.
Thank you very much, this is great advice. Will definitely look into the sophomore SM internships.
I understand the part about IB/PE, but what do you think about equity research? I don’t care too much about prestige out of undergrad and just want to set myself up for an investing role in the future. I think that ER would help me to transition into a HF since I’m already covering companies, however, I still see a lack of ER people at SMs. Is the reason for SMs not hiring much from ER due to the lack of modeling?
Also, would you recommend taking a good ER offer (JP/MS/BofA) or a mid BB / low EB offer (Barclays/Citi/Gugg/UBS) for HF exits?
Thanks!
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