FINRA Certifications

Hello Wall St Oasis, 
 

I just recently passed my SIE certification, and I am looking to collect my infinity stones (7, 66, 79) within the rest of the year. I am sponsored by my current spot, and I am looking to leverage it to get into an MM bank. 

With almost a year of capital markets experience in NYC, I am looking to expand into a larger bank for more IB experience. 

I am graduating in Fall 2024, 3.7 GPA, but a non-target school.

Looking for advice, banks, spots to network, educational resources, all of it. I'd love to hear it all!

Thank you guys. 

6 Comments
 
Most Helpful

The certifications don't do much to help with lateraling. If you want to get it done because they'll pay for it, feel free, but doesn't add a ton to the applications. Banks don't mind having you just take them when you start.

More importantly - banks will HEAVILY discount any experience pre-graduation, the clock on FT experience doesn't really start ticking until you graduate. Even if you've been working full-time in NYC, banks will still view this as an internship. You would still be looking for 1st year analyst FT spots (hard to find right now, but of course apply/network to any openings) and the clock to move to an experienced analyst lateral spot would start ticking once you graduate

 

7 is not used in IB (only cap markets, lev fin/DCM/ECM) and is a huge time suck, so definitely skip that one. 

Truthfully still think it's a bad use of time. Assuming you're graduating in December, you'll sneak into the sweet spot of FT25 recruiting come this summer (late August), which you should be networking for. Banks do not give a crap if a new FT hire has the FINRA licenses. Networking is much more important. Most FT jobs do not make it online at all because all interview spots are filled with networking.

Hard to say which banks will have spots hence why you need to network to find out. 

 

Interesting. With my CM experience and non-target, my assumption would be LMM at to MM IB. Would you agree?

My longterm goal would be to transition to PE, if that also matters.

If LMM to MM is correct, would you suggest a geographical research of banks in that range?

 

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