An MBA grad...desperate for advice
I'll cut to the chase and save ya'll the 'yOu ShOulDn'T hAvE gOtTeN yOuR MbA" comments.
-I'm well aware of the fact that i've been finessed into enrolling in their non-target, bullshit 1 year MBA program. I graduated there with my bachelors in business management and a concentration in finance in 2019. Unfortunately, a top tier school in every fucking major except....you guessed it Finance. This essentially made it extremely difficult to find any internships relating to IB, PE, or any analyst position since there are no relationships and any reputable financial institutions that would even bother showing up to their career fairs/recruiting events. Upon graduating, I spoke with an advisor on different approaches on how to get my feet wet, where she then convinced me that I would be prepared for a career in IB at any broker-dealer. Fast-forward to August 2020 I finished my MBA in Finance without any internship experience thinking that it could get me an entry-level position. I now realize that I was extremely naive and underestimated the competitiveness of this industry. I've been sending out my resume on LinkedIn & Indeed for months now, and have been sitting with my dick in my hand ever since. I really just need some solid advice, be brutally honest. Do I ever have a chance of landing a job as an entry-level analyst at any IB firm? I can care less about the pay, reputation, or any bitch work, I may have to do to get my foot in the door.
Should I fully reconsider careers? Do I just need to fucking work harder and network my fucking dick off? Should I be using this time to gain a proficiency in excel DCF, LBO, M&A modeling? any and alllll advice will HELP!
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Brother, first, don't consider yourself as a loser or something. You use a lot of negative words to talk about yourself. Second, you can do it, but your strategy until now has been the wrong one. Getting a position in IB is about networking, yet you've been sending out dozens of resumes without talking to anyone. That's actually a common error.
What you gotta do is
Your strategy at this point has to be to get an internship at a boutique where you'll be able to get actual experience. After that internship, you do another internship at a slightly better firm and get a full-time offer. Then you keep networking to lateral to an Analyst1 position at a reputable bank, etc. At all steps, what you have to do is network your ass off. 2000 emails and follow-ups, at least. The next 1-2 years are gonna be real shit, because you'll have to send thousands of emails, talk with hundreds of people, and you'll wonder if it's worth continuing. But you're in the US where networking is king, and there are plenty of stories of people on WSO who hit rock bottom and finally managed to break into IB.
Don't ask yourself if you "can" get into IB. Monkeys can do this job. It's all about how much shit you're willing to get through - get grinding.
I appreciate the blunt nature and straightforwardness of your answer. I can imagine that the thousands of cold emails i'm going to have to send will need some substance to them. I'm brand new to this forum and already read countless of pages that are extremely useful so far, please forgive my ignorance but are these IB resume/cold calling templates available free on this website? I will definitely take your advice. I know that the first step in everything is your foot in the door, it's just been extremely discouraging to even find that! Thank you for the valuable information, sir!
I would do the same above , email no name boutiques and I am sure you will find something,
I would do the same above , email no name boutiques and I am sure you will find something,
You sound like a bitch. Let that sink in.
Ahh I was told this was a bit different than reddit. Same dick eaters here too I suppose.
Bitch.
Try commercial/corporate banking as well.
Specific positions/institutions you have in mind? Would this actually help me leverage into IB?
I've seen Corporate Banking Analysts lateral to Investment Banking Analyst at the BB I'm at. Or you can be like me and enjoy the role, especially the work/life balance and just stay the course. For Commercial Banking, I've seen analyst exit to Corporate banking roles and some private debt roles. Good luck!
my guy... you need to focus on getting a job...
forget about IB for a minute and just focus on getting yourself onto a career path. you've literally just come out of school with probably little if any impressive experience / achievements and decided to do a shit tier MBA on top. you don't have the luxury of wondering whether a path "will set you up for IB". worry about that after you've gotten an offer for something.
it seems like you think that banking is something you can just "waltz" into. unfortunately bro it's not. it's one of the most competitive gigs to get into out of school. nobody just waltzes in. if you were really serious about getting into this biz you'd be pounding the pavement speaking to anyone and everyone working at smaller shops trying to impress them enough to throw you a bone.
since it looks like you can't be bothered to do that, focus on just getting into a decent goddamn career first. once that's sorted, you'll have a paycheck, legitimate work experience, hopefully a professional network, credibility etc. from there you could leverage those things into higher probability networking punts or even a top MBA to access the 2nd structural entry point into banking.
so take a step back. consider which slightly easier careers align with your interests. shape your resume to fit what employers in those gigs are looking for and then craft + execute a recruiting strategy encompassing reach-outs, resume drops and any warm leads. that should be your number 1 priority right now. not whether a suggested career will "help you get into banking", seriously.
Instead of looking down on "life insurance/annuity/IRA wealth advisor" roles, accept that you might have to take one or two steps to where you want to be. In doing so, try thinking about how you can use roles to expand your network and craft a story. See if you can work with people that are well connected and can refer you. Additionally, don't want to burst your bubble, but IB really is a sales job in the long run and you don't need to know that many formulas lol. You can definitely make it, so pace yourself and try not to seem like you have a chip on your shoulder.
Also check out PWM / WM opportunities. I came up that way, and there's a lot of pedigreed ex-bankers in the space.
I have accepted the fact that I might have to end up in one of those positions lol. Relax man if i'm shitting on anyone right now, it's myself. But thanks for the advice, If that's my last resort I would go for it if your'e confident that it can be a reliable loophole into the industry. I'll do my research on the differences between PWM and financial advisors at corporate banks and life insurance companies.
no need to hate on the financial sales bros
Understand the situation, also from ny pm me
Will do, thank you
Thank you. I’m torn between being practical and searching for alternative careers, however there are also many saying not to give up just yet. I think I’ll give myself a timeline of about 8 months to a year to cold email as many recruiters as possible. If that doesn’t work I’ll most likely switch paths.
Some alternatives to consider if you can’t break directly into ib: corporate banking, credit rating agency, wealth management, maybe even fp&a to possibly lateral into ib later. Be positive & work on crafting your story. There’s no one path to success.
Great advice I appreciate the motivation. Do you think I should pursue this rather than spending a year trying to find something I prefer?
I can’t answer that for you only you know that. I think there’s other means to get to where you wanna go though without breaking directly in. Part of the challenge here is that mba’s are usually associate hires in ib & without direct experience from a non-target it’s an uphill battle. You’ll have to network like crazy & know your shit clean if you do get interviews. Alternatively, you could do a few years in one of the other areas I mentioned or even big4 TAS & possibility lateral then. Who knows though maybe you’ll enjoy it & end up wanting to stay. I just want to reiterate there’s no one path to success, you’ll be fine.
Cold emailing with no plan is better than no emailing, but not that much better, regardless of the number of emails sent. It took me 20 calls to realize this in my freshman year, where the calls would go no where.
Showing potential as a candidate is much more effective. Say I am a coverage banker covering consumer - if you emailed me introducing yourself, then a 5 sentence paragraph on how you developed an interest in IB by following x consumer subsector that you believe will see significant consolidation, that is far more interesting. We can then talk about your views on this subsector on the call.
An example on a potential consumer subsector with weed as a template for discussions on calls:
-Industry Trends: Legalization, bipartisan support for decriminalization, strong revenues for states in need of cash, etc.
-Recent merger activity (you can find on Google), driven by x factors (e.g. all companies trying to simultaneously gain scale before full legalization, and then go into financial benefits of scale)
-Some potential candidates to be consolidated that you would pitch and drivers behind each of the candidates
The research above you can do on Google. What is harder is learning to think about business the right way in terms of drivers of growth, margin expansion, etc. I would get started by reading through these: https://www.10xebitda.com/hedge-fund-presentations/
What would really hit the mark is if you could taylor the industry and potential targets to something my firm and group would realistically pursue as a deal opportunity. Might sound like a lot, but I went to a complete non-target and knew plenty of kids from my school who used this strategy successfully as undergrads to land EB and BB jobs. For EBs and MMs, you can usually check their firm website for past deals. For BBs it might be a bit of a fishing trip without Bloomberg, but you can use "advised by BB" "subsector" as search terms on Google to get started. In fact, you should push yourself and tack on a merger model that you built with public financials and free online resources (Macabacus, YouTube, etc.). Getting grilled on the phone over a pitch is just a plus opportunity to prove your technical competency.
The combination of the above is something that is far more impressive than you telling me how you sent 1000 emails, and just need someone to take a chance on you. That just sounds like you exhausted your options and are hoping for luck to bail you out.
To make this even more practical and actionable:
For all non-Stony Brook alumni, I personally would focus on MM firms that do M&A with a focus on sub $500mm deals. This pool tends to be the most willing to hire laterals from non-banking backgrounds (e.g. big 4 audit or tax, corp fin, etc.)
Would reach out to all Stony Brook alumni in banking, regardless of title (MD or analyst). LinkedIn is a great way to do find the alumni, and you should be able to accomplish this using the free version only. Would then email them instead of reaching out to connect on LinkedIn.
Thanks for the pointers I’ll definitely try that approach as well. It sounds tedious considering I’d have to tailor my research to each specific company with assumptions that make sense and can be applicable for each firm. They can either laugh in my face or give me a shot but it’s worth trying.
Absolutely will do. Thanks for the advice man.
You got this brother. Happens to everyone. Keep your head up and keep fighting.
Be aggressive and go get it!
Unfortunately for you, you graduated during a pandemic making it very difficult. But the tours not over boyo, keep going until you get there. Work for free if you have to if it gives you a chance to network your way in.
Thank you i'll try an aggressive approach and keep everyone updated
The most important thing is for you to get rid of the chip on your shoulder and channel it into different places in your life. As others have mentioned, it's going to be very hard for you to find anything from Stony Brook (I know it's a hard school but people don't consider it a target and won't give you credit for attending there). Keep on applying to all Big 4 roles, Credit Rating Agencies, even compliance roles at the BB. After 1.5 years, you'll be able to lateral into a different division if you're a good performer (avoid Goldman compliance roles, has long hours and a brutal culture where internal lateralling is not welcome).
I feel like S&P has opening literally everyday. Go apply on Linkedin!
Will do, thank you for the advice man
A lot of great advice already above: network, network, network.
But honestly getting an IB associate job without an internship is difficult from even a M7. Getting an analyst position may be difficult cuz you have an MBA, implied age. (Nevertheless possible: Met a second year analyst with a kid who was 30 / BB)
My suggested plan of attack:
Keep networking.
Take on a FP&A / Treasurer / Investor Relations / Corp Fin. Target Fortune 100 firms.
Build some experience, and then see if you can pivot.
Or
Find one of the above mentioned roles at a hot startup. You never know, you may end up at the next TSLA or something.
I don’t know why my spacing is all jacked up.
Awesome advice, thanks for the input man. Intense networking at smaller boutique firms is definitely the main takeaway I’m getting here. I will keep you guys updated if I get any offers.
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