How did you decide what you wanted to do?

Hi there,

It took me a while, and I changed my mind a couple of times, so first off is to be ok with just making a decision without necessarily being 100% certain about it.

As for actually choosing, I would do three things:

1. Read through the FT, WSJ, Economist, Businessweek, and other such publications. Find the type of stories that interest you more. Are you excited to hear more about the Fed and Central Banks decisions and what motivates them? Are you curious about the problems encountered by large companies and how they innovate or solved or overcame a challenge? Are you interested in the finance stories about investment and what new strategies funds are employing? This can be a first guide.

2. Talk to/read about people's work in consulting, finance, academia, corporate functions. You can either do it here, or on LinkedIn by networking, or via your university's alumni network. Find out whose job sounds most interesting to you and whose personality you prefer (that one matters too, cause you'll be spending anywhere from 40 to 100h/week with dozens of folks like them, so you better either like them or not mind them).

3. Start looking at the prep. Basically, look at what it takes to prep for an IB interview, for a consulting interview, for a PE interview, and for more traditional corporate jobs interviews. It's been said before, but for consulting, if you don't enjoy casing during interviews, you will probably not enjoy the job. If you look at the prep for IB and realise "Oh hell no, I am not spending hours on end doing three-statement modelling!" then it is a strong indication this is maybe not for you.

And since you're in college still, try a couple of different internships. It'll force you to do #3 and give you exposure to #2 by construction.

Good luck!