Career Path Advice for a New Banker
Hi,
I ended up with a pretty amazing graduate position down here in New Zealand, which I started about 3 months ago. I’m looking for some advice and insight on what career paths I have available and should be looking to take. I hope this is in the right forum.
Let me start by giving some background. I finished my undergrad from one of our 5 major universities (they are all respected pretty much evenly) about 2 1/2 years ago. I didn't apply for any jobs as I was finishing and I went off and travelled through Europe, the US, Alaska, and Central America. In the middle of these travels, I came back to NZ for a few months during the time banks here do their recruiting. They generally give offers during the beginning/middle of the final year of study.
I was given an offer by the "Institutional Banking" business in one of the large banks here. We don't really have investment banks in NZ, so we are talking the equivalent of Wells Fargo, etc. Apparently just over 1% of applications were granted positions in this program -- so I am feeling pretty stoked about it.
The structure of the program is great in that it realises that most of us a) don't really know how banking works, and b) don't really know where our interests/strengths lie. I signed a 2 year contract that moves me every 6 months for those 2 years, giving me a pretty broad exposure through out Markets Team, Economics Team (advisory to clients and internally), Strategy/Project Management Team, and Relationship Management. We have some prop traders, but the majority of what we do is obviously sell-side.
So I feel pretty well-placed by New Zealand standards. I have a 4.00 GPA, a top-of-the-country graduate job, and over the next few months, I'll actually be heading the team that is bringing a brand new hedging product to market.
So that is where I am currently. Now the question is where do I want to go?
I don't want to work in New York or London. I don't want to work 100 hours a week. I don't really care about salary. I do want to be interested/engaged/challenged by my work. I'd like to position myself over the next 5 years so that I can do contract/consulting work or at least be very flexible with my time. I plan on starting my own business (completely unrelated to finance) over the next few years and would like to be able to regularly have time to devote to that when necessary. i.e. work 4 months on 4 months off.
So I guess the underlying questions is how do I fast-track myself, from where I am, to a position where I can choose my own hours and still do interesting work? Keep in mind that I don't ever need to make a million bucks a year, or even close.
I am interested in PE, VC, Funds Management, and Advisory (and probably other areas that I don't even know I am interested in). I’m pretty smart and also have very good people skills.
I am planning on sitting my first CFA exam in Dec.
Anyway, I really would appreciate your thoughts and insights on which direction I should be headed and how to best get there. I would also really be interested in working in Asia, or Latin America.
Thanks in Advance,
NZX
It seems as though you are too open minded and not moderately focused as to what you want to do going forward. The criteria that you listed are conflicting in some ways and downright incompatible in some instances. For example, you are saying that you want to start your own business down the line. To do this you will need contacts wherever you want to open your shop cause nothing happens without good contacts. For this you would need to have worked in that location first. Secondly, you will need a decent amount of start-up capital that you will have to provide solely by yourself unless you want to have partners. To get that type of money and contacts in 3-4 years, you need a solid paying job in a major finance power house which would inevitably make you work in one of the major financial centers of the world i.e NYC, London, Hong Kong at least for a couple of years. So you need to be flexible about that.
If you are interested in PE or VC, the CFA is downright useless. It does not give you any credible skills that will give you an edge and having a CFA is not going to make you stand out for those jobs as far as recruiters are concerned. Having experience at a solid bulge bracket investment bank is the most important factor for attracting the attention of PE or VC recruiters. Take the CFA if you are interested in equity research at the Hedge fund level or even at bulge bracket banks.
If you want to get a position where you can pick your own hours, you need to start your own business cause nothing else will allow you to do that ( even MD's and partners at big name firms have to haul ass when deals come to a close in the middle of the night). If you want to do personal wealth management, this would be relatively easy as you can build relationships and then manage the money of individuals. The pay in this is significantly lower (than banking, PE etc) as your commission will be your pay. That being said , if your client book is huge, then you will make good money.
Starting a business in any of the other fields you listed is very hard due to high barriers to entry. The best way of scoping out each sector is getting to talk to industry veterans in each of the fields. For this you need to start networking at the work place and reach out to other divisions of your employer if it is a major financial powerhouse in the region. and start asking relevant questions.
Hope that helps.
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