I've made mistakes

I need help.

So, I went to a private liberal arts school in NY and live in NY. I was extremely lazy and suffered from depression as a teenager so I never really worked through school. I eventually worked through it but only towards the very end of my college year so I didn't do any internships.

I graduated in 2015 with a dual degree in economics and finance, a 4.0 in finance, 3.8 in economics and 3.83 overall. I worked in fund accounting at a bottom of the barrel fund admin from 2016 to April 2017 because I was having real trouble landing anything else and then went to work as a hedge fund accountant at a pretty big fund, with some aspects of investor ops. I'm also a CFA level 2 candidate for the upcoming June 2019 test.

I have the support of some internal managers to switch to a valuations role (I can send the job spec to someone by pm) which will cover valuations of special investments, real estate, private equity, energy, etc. Also going to have some exposure to the deal team. But since it's not a direct investment role, it's also going to have typical reporting requirements necessary and all that. It'll also have exposure to modeling. This role will be at the same fund, but it's still basically BO.

Basically I need help with what to do and how I can break into IB at this point. I feel like I have made pretty decent turnaround progress over the last 2 or so years but I'm not sure it'll be enough.

Do I do the valuations role, do I jump ship and literally do unpaid internships or something? I'm trying my best, I could use some pointers with how to network too. All my time is currently spent working, studying for the test and applying for new jobs online, should I be trying to get in touch with alumni?

Thanks in advance

3 Comments
 

Don't ever do unpaid internships, especially for IB. With the hours you will be putting in, you will wish you had never taken that unpaid internship.

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Thanks, based on those it looks like valuations at a hedge fund seems like a good stepping stone out of accounting and more towards actual experience and I reached out to a CFA group in NYC and will go to their networking events and happy hours as a start.

 

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