Athlete Breaking into Finance

Hey all,

Need some advice. 2 years out of school and have been a professional athlete for that time. However, I have also been working part time at a small company as a business analyst, which has been a good experience but more on the operations side of things than I'd like. Leaving the area because I've been getting injured too much and I only took the job to get some career experience/kill some boredom.

Stats: 3.5 GPA in physics from a target; GRE of 167Q 166V. I figure it's good enough, right? My senior year of college I didn't have any problem getting interviews. Now, though, I haven't been getting any offers. Ideally, I'd get a job at a buy side shop but I am under NO illusions that that's going to be near impossible. Totally willing to start at the bottom as a sell side analyst. Should I leave the work experience off my resume since it's in operations? Did I shoot myself in the foot a bit? I'm going to finish out my season and my employer would like me to continue to work at least through mid-summer so I haven't started using my network yet and I really hate asking for favors, but I will if I have to.

Thanks.

7 Comments
 

if you go to a target, how did you only score a 167 on Q im sorry if im coming off the wrong way, but its just that what chance do i have if you studied physics at a target and only got a 167. did you study at all? and a 166 on V is impressive

sorry i get that this is totally not related to the question (shoot me a PM i'd love to talk with you!) anyway, you should definitely go back to school if that's an option for you look into MiM, MMS and MSF for a rebranding

if school isn't an option for you, i'd recommend either 1. networking into a boutique firm, then trying to lateral to a firm you might like more 2. lateral to Ops (or whatever it is you did for two years) at a BB, then work 1-2 years, try to make the jump into finance, or whatever it is you want to do

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Made a few careless errors - read 101 as 100, etc. No, I did not prepare all that thoroughly. I have been debating taking the GMAT because the quant ceiling is higher.

I applied to the princeton mfin and got an interview but I think the lack of finance work experience hurt me. So now I'm sort of trapped in that cycle that occurs because of no experience.

 

Start networking. You're not going to have a hard time selling your story to anyone and a 3.5 in physics from a target isn't going to turn anyone off.

Buy side is a broad term, but if you're wanting private equity or some kind of fundamental equity HF then banking is the best place to start.

[quote=patternfinder]Of course, I would just buy in scales. [/quote] See my WSO Blog | my AMA
 

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