Designing my future career path after M&A, PE/VC and HY Credit Research
Hi everyone!
I'm only 23 years old and still in college but I've managed to already get ~3 years of experience, having worked 1 year in corporate M&A for a large company with a very active dealflow + 1 year in small Private Equity/Venture Capital fund (it was more VC than PE in terms of company size, but they weren't really exponential growth companies). I've been heavily involved with modelling + heavy research + making PPTs (and putting in hours) in all of these jobs and gathered a lot of experience. I study Engineering in an very elite college in my country btw.
As everyone else here in this website, in the beginning I was obsessed with making it into PE, but as I progressed in my career I wanted to experience new things outside the regular equities space. So, I started looking for Credit Research roles and eventually got accepted to one at a global midsized emerging markets investment bank in the High Yield and Distressed Credit Research team (sell-side). I probably could've gone to buy-side Equity Research or M&A in a boutique (I had a few options), but this Credit Research job was really pulling me - for many reasons, main one being it's an international bank and I live in a developing country where that kind of experience is highly valued (international + investment bank are certainly gonna add a lot to my CV here). Unfortunately, ECM IB roles are almost non-existent in my city.
I've only been in the new job for a week, but I've noticed the analysis models seem to be more simple than equity valuation models. For most companies, we're usually only concerned with the present financial statements and operations. For the distressed ones, we'll do a 4~5 year projection to design our recovery thesis. I don't know, but is this kind of experience gonna be valuable if I want to go back to PE, or maybe break into Equity Research or IB? I'm obviously gonna learn a lot about fixed income, bond pricing and structuring, macroeconomics etc and I think that is gonna be a huge upside for me, but I fear my profile won't be valuable to these kinds of opportunities if I stay too long in this new job. I'm probably being irrational, I don't know.
Am I panicking? My girlfriend and parents say that I'm self sabotaging and I'm building an outstanding CV because people rarely have a range of experiences as broad as I have this early in life. And also, the guys at the bank said I should probably rotate between Research, IB and Trading, because they want me to get a feel of the business as a whole.
It just seems like I can never settle and enjoy the experiences I'm having. I know I'm a super privileged kid to be having the kinds of experiences I'm having so early in life, specially because I've never had any "help" from family or friends to "get placed" in any of these jobs, but I'm always trying to plan ahead for the next prestigious thing and feeling like what I have right now is shit, even though I can rationally recognize it isn't. Fear not being successful as I want in the future consumes me.
I'm sorry if this feels like I'm just desperate for someone to give me a pat on the back and validate my decisions. I'd love that (who wouldn't) but I'm just honestly opening myself here to try to get some guidance.
