Seeking Genuine Advice, breaking into IB, post graduate.

Seeking advice, not really looking for the “you’re cooked” comments, but some genuine help. Here’s the story. I have 0 prior internships, Finance Major Graduate Semi-Target NYC 3.4 GPA I’m looking to break into finance, but I’m having a lot of trouble. I ultimately want to end up in VC but I think that investment banking is a good area to transition from. With that said, I went to a two-year college that at the time was only online due to Covid, during this time there were no career fairs, or anything of that sort. After that, I transferred to a semi target, and, at the same time, I was running my own businesses. Instead of realizing how important internships were, I thought it would be good to focus on keeping my grades up and focusing on my businesses. It was also a weird transition to be back in school normally. Long story short I only realized how important it was to get an internship in my last semester of college, which I missed that window of opportunity because I didn’t think that I would have time to prepare for all of the technicals by then. I’m now graduated, and have spent the past two months studying for technicals, and behaviorals, I have been reaching out trying to network, sending LinkedIn messages, emails, as much as I can. There are almost no internships offered to post graduates and I seriously am passionate and have the drive to break into investment banking, but I don’t know if what I’m doing is the right thing. WSO and other companies offer programs that are about $8000 that promise you at least one offer or your money back, but I have been told by some of these companies that because I’m not in college, that they will not honor this. I have applied for WSO’s program, and I’m curious to see if I get into that. However, I’m just trying to see what I should do differently. I have been trying to contact more boutique banks, rather than elite Banks obviously. Would appreciate some help. Thanks.

3 Comments
 
Most Helpful

I'm gonna focus more on the VC side of things than the IB side because you said that's where you want to end up, and I can assuredly tell you that you will have a much easier time breaking into VC from a startup or early stage company basis than IB. Go work for a startup. Early stage, probably post PMF, and just learn. You can find a ton of startup listings on places like YC, Wellfound, Techstars, or Angelist. Now, if you really want to go for banking, best bet would be either to take full time role and network, do a masters in finance, or wait 2 years and go for MBA. Also, there's never gonna be internships, just full time recruiting. 

 

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