Two years of learning nothing???
Guys I need some help thinking through this.
I'm one of those finance nerds who is obsessed with markets. I interned at two hedge funds during summers and did tons of stock pitches for competitions and for my school's student investment fund, which I now hold a leadership position at.
I also happen to have an unusual amount of knowledge in a niche sector; during the school year I write a blog about this stuff geared towards investors who are trying to ramp because the sector is really complex.
I just started my internship at top banking group covering my sector and I'm doing great. The senior bankers love my industry knowledge (the VPs even come to my desk to ask questions sometimes) and my stock pitches gave me super strong technical preparation. I've become the de facto analyst on one of my teams and am sending modelling tasks directly to my associate because my analyst is swamped. Reviews have been very positive.
You would think I would be excited about this but I'm actually very disappointed. I was looking forward to learning a ton and being challenged every day by new deals and new situations, but I feel like that's not what banking is. I am honestly dreading working really hard for two years and yet learning nothing. I mean I've been learning about transaction processes and board dynamics but for every drop of interesting information I have to endure 2 or 3 "management overview" slides.
What should I do? Am I wrong to think this way? My dream job is at a HF / LO, but at this point I'm considering consulting purely for the incremental intellectual stimulation. Should I try really hard to jump ship?
Use your industry uniqueness to your advantage and recruit for specific HF/ER positions.
You've already described what you should be learning in this role, deal process. Financial models are certainly important and not to be understated, but that can be taught in classrooms and online courses. As a banker your sole job is to look at a company's financials and spin the best possible story of it for investors, which takes a level of financial literacy and competency to do. However, in the end their job is equivalent to a real estate agent, just trying to get buyers excited about whatever they're mandated to sell. If you were truly interested in stock pitches and investment thesis, then IB is not for you. It could be a resume padder to show work ethic and a bank's stamp of approval, but you'd be better off in HF or an Asset Manager where they make the investment thesis and act upon it.
People only go to IB for the money very early on and the optionality it gives them. Very rarely will you learn anything of consequence outside of basic modeling skills and financial literacy with hundreds/thousands of reps to engrain it into you. My best advice is to head down the route that would make you the happiest and keep an IB offer in your back pocket as a fall back.
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