Career advice - Need a reality check

Hi all,

I have posted about this semi-recently and got limited reception so hoping v2 gets a bit more.

I am currently working on the m&a and capital advisory (mm ib) team at a large accounting firm think (gt, rsm, bdo).

Not exactly prestigious, but extremely grateful for the opportunity given that I came from a non-target and the market was tough.

Worked my ass off for this role, but I find myself feeling bad/embarrassed compared to my peers who landed BB/EB roles.

My current plan is to stay here for 1-2yrs, and break into a mid market PE firm after that and do an MBA afterwards.

It is possible given that analysts from my firm have broken into mid-tier PE firms from here. But I wanted to see what you all think and if that’s a viable path given my experience.

Cheers!

12 Comments
 
Most Helpful

OP is asking for a reality check. Reality is that our jobs don’t care about us and younger people need to understand that sooner than i and others before me did. Constant comparison to where peers work and a what they do is a losers game.
As for career advice: show up, do what’s asked, upskill as needed, and if grad school opportunities present themselves then take ‘em.

My overall career advice for anyone is make as much money as you can, be smart with your money, bounce as soon as possible, and generally just chill the f out.

 

Here’s a reality check from someone who had a very similar thought process. Failed recruitment and ended up in CB at a nonBB. Felt like shit was always dreading the experience during SA and FT because all of my peers were getting a bunch of exposure to sexy deals, modeling, and big bonuses while I was here penetrating revolvers and shilling out cash management products. I felt like a loser and a failure (not to sound pretentious but going to a target makes it easy to get into that mindset). I ended up lateraling to IB as an analyst and finally felt validated. I learned so much after I lateraled, but I realized I took for granted the WLB and the culture in my CB role. I missed my CB position so much that after two years of IB I ended up going back to CB which I now love doing. My advice is this — If you are learning a lot in your role, enjoy the people, comp, etc., then there’s no need to care about prestige. Learning is probably the most important think in your early career and that’s probably the biggest reason why I don’t regret doing my IB stint. It puts you in an environment that forces you to learn a large amount of information in a relatively small timeframe which I just wasn’t getting in my CB role. Anyways hope that helps.

 

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