Does a financial analyst job at a large non-banking company lead to an analyst job in finance?

If someone were to be offered an entry level job at a large company, say at an airline or a large manufacturing business, is this attractive to people hiring analysts at banks? How would this compare to say, a back office position at a decent level investment bank? Thanks everyone.

4 Comments
 

You need to provide more detail surrounding the entry level job. Not all entry level jobs are the same. An investment bank will look much more favorably at a Petroleum Engineer at ExxonMobil than a Transportation/Shipping Analyst at Alaska Airlines. This is especially true if the entry-level position relates to a form of IB. In the case of the Petroleum Engineer, he/she may be well-suited for Oil & Gas Banking in Houston.

 
Best Response

Strongly disagree with prior posts, but I'll caveat. I think a financial analyst role at a large corporation can lead to decent placement for business school, and subsequent decent placement into an associate program.

However, OP asked about placement into an analyst program, and I have never seen an investment bank hire an analyst with that background. I would say somewhere around 50-80% of the IBD analyst class is filled with people who summered at the bank (depending on year), and then 15-45% is filled by people who summered in IBD at another bank.

There is a bout a 5% sliver of people who were full-time analysts in other divisions of the bank and are allowed to lateral into IBD. Later into the program, the bank will hire laterals to replace analysts who leave early, but these are almost exclusively banking analysts from other banks who have already gone through training and have experience.

 

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