Early 40s Career Changer with MBA But No Experience
I’ve been reading for a while but this is my first post. I’d appreciate anyone’s thoughts / advice / perspective. I want to change careers and go into Finance. Key facts:
A few years ago, I earned nearly a 4.0 at a small, part-time MBA program with a Finance concentration, loved all I learned, and it was almost free for me. I’m a teacher by day, with some experience in consulting and some in the arts. Life circumstances prevented me from getting any internship during grad school. So I have no real on-the-job experience in a Finance role, other than a couple of one-off, brief, small business consulting projects. I’ve had not much urgency to leave my job current since then, but I’ve been looking, applying, and trying to network, not too successfully. I’m old! Early 40s, with a family, too! Chuckle all you want. I do have a sense of humor. “Finance” is so broad, but I do like specific areas like equity research / investment analysis, trading, economics, valuations, fixed income, risk, and real estate. Less so FP&A, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I’ve had a few pre-interviews for Analyst positions in Risk, Portfolio, and Fixed Income, for example. I’d love to eventually pursue CFA but that’s probably quite unpractical at this point in time, for me.
Questions: 1) What niche(s) within the Finance world do you think would be best for me to pursue / target, with the best chance of being taken seriously, getting a good number of interviews, and landing a new career? 2) Is there any new skill or certificate that I should get and add to my resume? A certificate in any software? A SQL course?
I’m a bit entrepreneurial in spirit. I have an open mind about which niche, and I’m aware that my background, lack of experience, and age might limit my potential opportunities somewhat. For example, I wouldn’t be able to fit into 80-100 hrs/week positions, even if someone were to hire me to be the oldest IB / Analyst on the block. However, I do like that kind of work. Thanks for reading.
Research, Sales, Trading, and PWM (private wealth management) are all mostly age agnostic...you would likely never get an offer for classic IB due to the age/hours thing. However, you will need a more tangible "why me" story than what you've told so far.
Research and Trading, since you are not coming from the typical undergrad path, you will most likely need a technical background to get a foot in the door...and you may even need to backdoor it using a job in IT as a software engineer to get access (i've seen software engineers inside a BB who work on pricing engines lateral into trading desks....also...desk quants who come from masters/phd in hard mathy sciences often get to lateral into trading roles within 1-2 years....i don't know your math/programming education...but we're talking hardcore math + programming chops for these roles)
Sales is more a networking/personality issue...if you have the right personality, you'll be able to network your way into an interview....and then its all about personality. I've known some sales people that are dumb as rocks, but made serious $$ because of their personality. Are they really dumb? They can make over 1mm/year..that doesn't sound dumb to me....
so...what hard skills do you have...and what are you capable of learning? time to be blunt...because as a generalist, this is a difficult path to break into.
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