Hey everyone! I've finally moved out of the finance life very recently into a more operationally-intensive role but this forum was tremendously helpful to me for years so I want to share my career path and thought process since I took some unconventional approaches.
Brief background
- Started college in a non-target majoring in accounting -> transferred to a target school after a year
- Did summer internships after freshmen, soph, and jr year (business valuation, investor relations, BB ER)
- Stuck with BB ER firm after college and joined FIG coverage (~stayed 2 years)
- Networked for 6 months and joined an operationally-focused consumer growth equity fund as an Associate
- Fleshed out my network while in growth equity and was referred a finance & operations role at a cannabis startup by an angel investor I befriended
I'd rather not dive too deep into the cannabis role just yet but happy to answer any other aspects of my background. I'm a pretty neurotic strategist when it comes to my career path so every move I did was quite deliberate and thought out. One area I struggled a lot on and hope to help people on this forum with is the art of networking, particularly developing networks from scratch as a junior person because I'm a firm believer that networking SUCKS and is a slow grind but can help you make pretty aggressive career leaps/pivots.
Consumer was a high preference of mine but I mostly just wanted to be in VC/Growth Equity. Given how tricky the transition is from FIG ER, I was sector agnostic and went after everything/anything where I could spin a story out of FIG. Even if I was truly agnostic, however, I always tell people I'm networking with that I'm specifically targeting their industry and make sure I have a relevantly crafted story ready.
Story: For consumer funds, I crafted the story that my work in FIG let me see the serious spending banks were making on streamlining and enhancing the consumer banking experience. Some banks were able to charge lower-than-market interest rates on checking accounts simply because they had a better consumer experience designed so deposits were stickier. This led me down a fascination into consumer behavior and ultimately innovations in the consumer space, hence my "passion" for consumer VC/GE.
Recruiting: I had a terrible experience in recruiters/headhunters for anything except FIG hedge funds. There were no bites since FIG ER was just too far removed to them for anything VC/GE. Thus, I took the pure network-for-a-job approach and reached out to my alumni base, people on LinkedIn, and people I meet in person at pitch competitions/networking events. If I feel like the VC/GE investment person I met is a great long-term asset, I'll send them relevant deals and information I pick up every now and then so they keep me top of mind for when openings roll their way.
How I got my job: One tactic some on this forum would consider aggressive is asking for introductions to other people that may be relevant to you. I've gone so far as to picking 3-5 people in their LinkedIn network and asking if they happened to be comfortable providing intros to any of them. I found that early stage investors are far more likely and willing to go out on a limb like this, and this was actually a HUGE aspect that sold me on continuing the recruiting even when I felt very defeated. Anyways, what eventually happened was that an alumni in VC helped intro me to a corporate VC and in the middle of my conversation with her, she got a group email from my fund-to-be searching for an Associate and she forwarded me that email. Fortunately, the person doing the recruiting for my fund-to-be ALSO started in the same BB bank I was doing ER in, albeit he did banking. Still I believe that commonality helped me stand out for an interview and the rest is history.
Back in my ER days, I had access to a portal where I could see every Analyst's research notes and fully downloadable models. That was a good starting place for me to understand modeling processes and drivers in the consumer space while having written notes to back them up. Prior to pursuing growth equity, I was shooting for hedge funds so I was also already building reps by finding random stocks to model out and checking against analyst models.
In terms of free resources, check to see if your school or a friend still at school has free financial data resources. My school used to have a barely-working portal to access Thompson but it did the trick. I also suggest you check this link out: https://www.toptal.com/finance/freelance/bloomberg-terminal-alternative
Toptal in general has some pretty in-depth financial knowledge articles that I find quite insightful and they're from certified CFO's, bankers, etc.
Regarding moves, I wanted to be a cannabis operator from the start but there's enough horror stories out there about the industry that I knew my move in would need to be very, very well-vetted. So to your point, I went to GE to (1) develop a good enough network that could lead me to the right move in cannabis and (2) so I could see the startup landscape and understand how good/bad companies operate and think. Fortunately, my experience in consumer has a lot of overlap with the operational challenges I'm currently being hired to tackle and being able to tap my network has been tremendously useful.
Oh to clarify, I was covering the FIG sector in ER. That said, the move from ER to IBD is not uncommon. Historically, I've been surprised how often IBD ends up using ER coverage notes and models to pull info for their deck slides, so having knowledge on an ER level is definitely helpful to transitioning into IBD. I've seen multiple people make the move and it's especially easier if your firm promotes internal mobility.
Bottom line, if you KILL it in ER, especially with management access and relationships, you can make the move to IBD. IBD at the later levels is all a relationship management game and being a trusted critical thinker who can tend to clients needs ASAP or even before they ask. If you're working under a good team in ER, you're already developing these skills as a ER Associate. What you'll have to make up for at the junior level is mainly understanding transaction processes and having the granular efficiency in Excel/modeling/Powerpoint that bankers have.
If you're lucky in ER and already cover an M&A-heavy sector, chances are you're already engaging in banking requests too.
TBH, my time in FIG ER was a ton of grinding and updating data points for routine research notes lol. There was a terrible lack of overlap between my job and my job search but this was unique to me and the team dynamic I had in ER. That said, your shortest story bridge to cross into growth equity would be FinTech and understanding innovations in whatever subsector of FIG you occupy.
If the growth equity fund you're talking with is worried about deal experience, try speaking to any deals that happened that remotely relate to your FIG ER coverage universe. Take a position as to whether the deal was good or bad on a financial & strategic level. Also make sure you flex that you're close to the startup ecosystem and call out a few companies that are worth noting for the fund to pay attention to (ex. A Fintech startup that raised a series A about 1-1.5 years ago in which you think their tackling of a certain problem is done very well; extra points if you know for a fact they're currently raising and can make an introduction to management)
For your resume, focus on areas like: * Deep dives into your coverage space, especially anything to do with innovation and startups * Development/defending/creation of investment thesis * Creation of presentations, research writing, and other client-facing outputs * Creation of financial models * To your point, ANY analysis of deals, acquisitions, fundings, and other transactions