Graduate with no experience in the UK
Tell me how f**ked am I.
I am a recent graduate in the last few months with no experience, considered a career in banking specifically S&T/ER but realised a career in banking was already over when I even thought about it during my final year when considering what i wanted to go into as I was already too late.
Now I have to lower my standards and apply to typical jobs such as audit/accountancy.
Just curious, has anyone been in my situation that has secured anything in banking.
Found out recently I have a friend who is relatively close with someone in IB and someone that is a trader. Not sure of their title but they are senior. I've already suffered defeat but just trying to shoot my last shot. Has anyone heard of any stories like this that has become successful?
Also just in general, can these guys really do anything to assist me getting in or am I just trying to chase my own shadow?
Thanks in advance
probs gna need to do a masters in finance
All is not lost! Though in the short term it's unlikely you'll manage to jump directly into a S&T or ER role.
First step, going for the auditing/accounting jobs is a good way to start. If you can't get a full time role in those then try to get an internship in anything finance related. After that a master's degree might be required (or a PhD in a quantitative area if you're really keen).
I also decided late (in my final undergrad year) that I wanted to get into trading. I did a master's in financial mathematics to bridge the gap. I wasn't successful at getting any banking internships so I did a finance related math project at my university over the summer holidays that I could stick on my resume.
If you're not already, I'd also recommend the below
For the friend of a friend who works in sales and trading or research. If you can get some time to have coffee with them go for it. Do research on WSO about the area they work in first so you can ask some relevant questions. They aren't going to be able to give you a job so don't treat it like that but it is an excellent opportunity to get an idea of what the jobs are actually like.
Good advice. I will add that if you can, join in on relevant extracurriculars now. Join your unis investment/finance/M&A whatever society and be a contributing member!
What universities would you consider for finance masters?
hello, may I ask what was your finance related math project? Was it something required by the university or did you just decide to do it? Also how did you connect this project to a resume/CV?
It was on portfolio optimisation in an equity portfolio that was a summer holiday project the university arranged. It was sort of working in an area that a professor did research in. It makes assumptions about historical correlations between the price of different assets being used to predict future correlations.
From day 1 I didn't think it was very useful in the real world since correlations go all over the place when there is a crisis.
It was useful for getting some experience doing some programming on a finance related project though and also was good on my resume to show I had a bit of interest in finance topics.
I'm from Australia so can't help too much with direct knowledge of UK universities sorry. If it was Sydney it would be Sydney University or UNSW.
I've had colleagues who have done finance masters at London School of Business or Warwick.
Getting something like master in financial mathematics could be useful if you want to get into the trading side. Work on excel/VBA/python skills as well.
The struggle with doing a masters is the funding for it.
My parents dont have the type of money to fund it and the scholarships are really hard to come by and hard to get. So Im just concerned about the costs
It sounds like your original thought of accountancy/audit would be good to pursue in that case. The reality is a masters degree isn't really useful in itself, it can just help get interviews or at least it did for me.
Go with accountancy/audit learn the skills and then try to move across. A large number of traders started in middle office or IT (Jerome Kerviel is an infamous example).
Do you mind if i pm you?
Don't wanna bombard this discussion with questions
I just sent a pm
Don't think its as bad as you make out ngl. Yes its most likely not gonna go well for FT roles with no internships, but big 4 audit should be doable and pretty sure you can move to ER once you have your ACA (some ER postings ask for a big 4 ACA).
MUFG's graduate classes are split between those who have prior experiences and those who do not.
Source: They said as much during their selective insight day
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