Q&A: Mid-career professional to top-bucket VP @ BB BO, thanks WSO!

I've debated writing a short or long post here. I initially chose the long option but it became way too long, no one would read it. So, I'll just give the short version: Yes, WSO has a lot of people that want to do the Analyst > Associate > MBA > Whatever dance. But I represent a mid-career professional that was able to move into a VP role at a BB. I had no banking experience - just a degree from a top 50 school and people able/willing to give me good recommendations. Basically, you can't have any "dead bodies" in your past and you must be able to present yourself and your skills well. I was fortunate to land this position and I am having an amazing time. I just finished my yearly review process and I was given top-bucket ratings. I'm hoping that my experience will help those of you that don't end up in finance immediately after college - there is always hope that you can get there and still excel in your position. Yes, this is BO so I'm not going to regale you with tales of fat bonuses. But my yearly raise was more than 4% and my bonus was 10%. In addition to that, the PTO offering is very generous and I never have to work more than 40 hours/week if I don't want to and I've only had to work 1 Saturday. For only 40 hours/week, you can do quite a bit worse than six-figure salary with a 10% bonus. I am also willing to turn this into an Q&A because so many people have approached me with questions about working in BO. I promise to answer as many question as I can. Here's some things I've learned in order to kick off the Q&A. 1. Sure, I don't make nearly as much as my IB counterparts. But how many vacation hours do you get in IB? Guess what - I get the same in BO! We both get the same benefits and I actually get to use mine! 1. I was given 3 summer analysts last year and I will do the same this year, including OCR. This is something that I enjoy quite a bit and maybe I'll get to meet some of you at some point 1. It took me a long time to understand this - don't do things for money, do things because you love them. My role is a specialty role (I'm being intentionally vague here) and that shows in my work ethic. When you love what you do, everything else (including the top bucket ratings) will come naturally to you. It's only when you do things that you don't like that you will struggle to impress others. ###How I found WSO Finally, I do want to share how I first came across WSO because I think it's amusing. I was doing a search one day about high end men's shoes and Google led me to the Fashion forum on WSO, talking about AE Park Aves and I explored the site from there. I think it's quite funny that that's the section of the site that I came through since it's visited so infrequently. I started to understand the entire "sub-culture" of finance that exists out there and reading through all the postings helped me prepare a bit for my interviews at the BB. I graduated from school just as the internet was becoming a "thing", I'm positive WSO didn't exist and information like this simply wasn't readily available. But it can still be helpful to people like me, in the middle of their careers, that somehow find themselves as a VP at a great BB :-)