Make a top 10 list of the hardest finance industries to get a job in

Hello All. I want your opinions of the top 5 or 10 hardest finance industries to break into (getting a job in). Number 1 being the hardest.

Here is an example list:

  1. Investment Banking
  2. Hedge Funds
  3. Asset Management
  4. Private Equity
  5. corporate finance
  6. XXXXX...
  7. XXXXX...
  8. XXXXX...
  9. XXXXX...
  10. XXXXX...

Feel free to use anything not mentioned above. Thanks.

2 Comments
 
Best Response

It's too hard to generalize. Some ostensibly hard to break into industries are actually easy to get into if you fulfill certain criteria. Different recruiting processes use different methods: some are easy if you are well-connected, some are easy if you have experience, some are easy if you went to the right school, etc. With that said, I would say IBD (BB, at least) is really tough unless you're the sort of archetypical grunt they look for (super type-A target school attendee). HF's on the other hand, in my experience, are the ones that most frequently humble sell-side employees who think they're hot shit. (Good) HF's won't give a fuck that you have 'Harvard College' or 'B.S. in Economics from Penn' on a piece of paper and that you worked at [insert BB here] for three years. If you can't perform, you're in, if not, you're not.

TL;DR A better classification would be on a continuum of meritocracy vs. box-checking

 

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