Mid-career move or did I ruin my Life?
So, I'm at a crossroads:
I started my career as a low level associate in wealth management (BB, but don't think it matters) and was promoted a few times but progress was very slow and our office didn't really have a career path or "improving your career" culture. Most everyone was also stuck.
So I'm 7yr in, have lots of business development experience and a nice looking resume, but most of my analytical skills are on paper only - CFA, Finance major at target school, can build a model from scratch. I ultimately want to end up in PE (which seems close to impossible at this point, you can laugh) and I'm trying to break into IB/hedge funds. Needless to say, it has not been easy. I got a couple of phone screening interviews, but right away I was told I wasn't right for an analyst job, and one person told me I should try to get a job as an Associate.
1) has anyone ever broken into IB/HF as an associate with a non-traditional (non-analytical/research/consulting) background?
2) I'm networking (read: cold emailing) and job-hunting. I was offered an internship at a small M&A IB (unpaid) and was wondering if that's a career killer, or if it's even relevant to have 3 months experience to get into IB?
3) does it make sense to get an MBA to go into IB? I'm target school undergrad but probably could not get into top10 MBA, maybe top 25. this could kill my chances of PE, and kind of not ideal bc I'm still paying my insane undergrad loans.
Don't do an unpaid internship - it's not a legitimate firm.
It's not ideal, but ok for someone with no experience. The OP has 7 years of work experience, and that is a different story.
IB, PE and HF are very different career paths. So before you do anything drastic, I would figure out which one you want and why.
IB is much more attainable than PE/HF but you've heard all the nightmare stories about why IB sucks. PE is most likely only possible if you get into IB (and even then it's no guarantee, especially since most firms are looking for 25 y/o pre-MBA guys.) That being said, I do know some of my IB associates had PE interviews despite no IB pre-MBA. RIght now is not a great time to go for HF, they are all shutting down left and right.
Why PE? I decided I wanted to start asking people this to get their answer.