I graduated last year with a 3.4cgpa, 3.8gpa in finance courses from the UofA and never got a job in the finance profession. Ultimately I wanted to do investment banking but never even got a single interview. I ended up taking a job in Fort McMurray doing something completely unrelated to finance. What I am doing has 0 transferable skills to any job outside of this company and outside of Fort McMurray. It is an office job and I have been given a fair bit of freedom and responsibility (I have already trained two new employees and been in charge of supervising their work). I am currently making $180k/yr though and will likely be making close to $200k/yr next year. This is the issue I am having...
Something has come up and I can probably get a relationship manager job for one of the big 5 banks in Canada doing small time commercial banking ($5m limit) in a major city. Pay would be somewhere around the $70k/yr mark with a small bonus or signing bonus. I have no interest in commercial banking. My interests really lie in investment banking. If I accepted this I would get the opportunity to at least gain "finance" work experience and I would be able to network in a city that actually has investment bankers.
If I don't accept this job, my plan was essentially to work where I am at another 3 years, milk this place for all the money I can and then try to get into an eastern school for an MBA program. I currently just wrote the level 2 CFA exam and will be writing level 3 next year. I am hoping that I could use the MBA as a "career change" to switch into finance and perhaps start in an area I'd rather be in than commercial banking and hopefully with a salary higher than $70k/yr. I am not sure if these are unreasonable expectations though and I realize that experience is king so there's the potential if I simply accepted a commercial banking job now I could avoid an MBA and end up with a better job even sooner than if I got an MBA.
What are your guy's opinions? The money here is really clouding my judgement and I need some help to decide what I should do. Thank you.
You are making $180k one year out of undergrad? What the fuck are the rest of us doing slaving away for these asshole banks
You at least are learning skills that are valuable. I am not. This job I am doing is very specific to this company's situation with their contractee and the pay is very specific to the area. The job I am doing is basically data-entry, though in theory it should cover more than that but it doesn't really because of how simple these jobs are. If tomorrow I got fired, I'd be back to square one. There's no accepting a more senior position at another company or anything like that. I could possibly accept a job doing what I am doing now in an entry-level position making $60k/yr, less than I would make doing commercial banking and I would dislike it more than commercial banking. The pay is likely not going to stay at $180k/yr either, the longer I stay here the higher the potential of my pay decreasing as more and more workers become available the pay is going to decrease. I'll probably be alright in the next few years but long-term there's nothing good about this job. Furthermore my wife will be graduated law in 2 years and then she articles for 1 (Canada's system) then she will be a lawyer and she won't be able to get a job in the city I am working. In short, I am going to be gone from here in 3 years no matter what.
The question really is do I stay here for 3 years and do an MBA or do I quit now, get some finance experience while finishing my CFA and attempt to not even bother with the MBA if possible or go back for an MBA but at least have some finance experience under my belt when I do?
I gotta agree with this here. I guess my main question would be what your motivation is to get into IB is? Is it the prospect of making more money, being in a finance-based field, prestige, ect.? Making $180,000 right out of undergrad is insane, and unless 1) the job is absolutely horrendous, 2) the hours are absolutely horrendous, or 3) there's not long-term career progression I personally would not contemplating jumping.
If you're set on it though, I definitely think you would be better off to wait and do the MBA rather than jumping losing over 50% of your current salary merely for the prospect of networking. It would allow you to built up some money to pay for your MBA (cause you'll probably do it regardless) and it would give you time to decide if IB is really what you want to do. Three years from now you may not want to make the jump, or be in a situation (married, kids) where working 90+ hours a week as an IB associate would not be ideal to you anymore.
It seems like your best bet is to get into a target school. You should have a lot less trouble paying for it given your current salary. Commercial Banking is not very likely to lead to IB. So if you have no interest in it, you're best off making 180k and going back to school.
You'd have to be so stupid to leave your current job. I understand the lack of job stability, but if it were to continue for awhile, you could be close to retiring by the time you would have completed your MBA. Your wife will make finance connections in big law (if she goes that route) and with your CFA you can get in. I'm sure you can sex up your current work in a resume/interview.
Plus as others have said your life is very volatile right now anyway, why do something crazy and risky for no clear benefit. Maybe you knock your wife up by the time your current job ends and then you can be a stay at home dad. No shame in that considering how much money you pulled in previously.
I have a friend that worked super hard in school, saved up a lot, made good cash coming out, payed for his wife to go to med school, payed for their 1st house, and now barely works and stays at home with the kids. No one looks at him as a layabout I can assure you of that.
$180k doing data entry first year out of undergrad. Makes sense.
Grind it out, make a lot of money save it up for an MBA or whatever grad school/next venture/year off traveling after a few years/whatever floats your boat - that is crazy money just out of school (assuming it is true - why lie about it here?).
If you have friends in banking, speak with them once in a while just to hear about their career paths and how they are taking things. If you don't have such friends, find some people here who are in banking, that you kinda vibe with and keep in touch with them. It is amazing how peoples' views change from the whole recruitment/trying to get into banking/pe etc period of life to a point in time 2-5 years later. You may find in a few years that when it comes time to quit that you don't want to do banking and would rather do something else. So much can change.
In other words, my recommendation is to clip away, keep making money and save it since you can have a lot of it after you quit (ie. not married, no kids, no mortgage), say 3 years down the line. You can glorify data entry somehow on the resume and talk about how you "managed people" and were "proactive" and "took on initiatives." If people really grill you, you can tell them the truth "I made 180k/year to data entry and manage some people right out of college and now I want to do something more where I am learning/is more dynamic etc" Not many people will be able to argue with you.
Do you have spare time? Read some books on investing or banking (or whatever interests you). Good Luck
180k out of Arizona? Can you elaborate more on what you actually do?
Edit: Alberta...
stay. target school. break in.
I don't agree with the previous posters that the answer is this obvious. I don't think staying with your current job and "making bank and then just going to HBS" is the best option if you adjust for the risks. What happens if your current job disappears? What happens if you actually don't get into a top graduate school? From what you told us until now, I am not sure whether the top grad school path is open to you.
You may well be better off going into commercial banking now and moving to IB from there, or going to grad school from there (again question is: how likely are these moves?). I suggest you find corresponding data, e.g. on Linkedin.
One could say the same thing about banking and lots of finance jobs. "What if your job disappears? What happens if you don't actually get into a top grad school?" There are lots of unemployed financiers (bankers, traders, salespeople) out there and an MBA is expensive (provided one gets in)...We seem to sort of gloss over that on this board. Probably because most folks here are pretty young and relatively inexpensive for their organizations...
PS I would actually take a 50% paycut if that gets me on a massively less risky, more lucractive, more fun career trajectory. Less cash now while you're young only means that you have to limit your consumption. Less cash when you have kids later on is a different animal, ask Dingdong08 for details ;).
^ that could be the answer
I may get shit for this, but no matter what job you have you are learning transferable skills. Please don't overrate the ability of 1st or 2nd year analysts to crush excel models in their sleep. Think about it, you are learning how to train and manage people at a very young age. You are also learning how to just 'do a job' even if it isn't what you want to get by. You obviously have SOME skill set or knowledge that warrants 180k a year for whatever it is you do. Hell, just the ability to get the job done given a bunch of freedom and responsibility at a young age is something that you can take from it.
I don't recommend taking the commercial banking job as a way to network with investment bankers and eventually land a gig. You've got a situation where you are, hopefully, doing great financially and you have a ton of options even if it doesn't seem like it. Use this site, reach out to anyone in your network from school. As you've said you are gone in a few years no matter what, so I think you are really being given an opportunity to use the financial resources you get from the 10% effort job you have to maximize the 90% of effort you put towards your future goals.
Just to shed some light on the OP's situation: U of A = University of Alberta. Fort McMurray = The Canadian Oil Sands.
There are kids who haven't graduated high school making >100k working in the patch.
Fort Mac is a miserable place: it's incredibly isolated, full of drug addicts and felons, and there are very few women.
To the OP: I would take the commercial banking job - it will be easier to get into a good MBA program.
Assuming you haven't wasted your 180k/year salary on low class hookers, a small trailer in the boonies, and large rocks of crack, you should be able to smooth the transition to a lower salary and self finance an MBA.
Damn that sucks. I didn't know shit like this existed.
Haha Fort Mac is a shithole lined with gold. I know a guy who lives in Atlanta and flies out there every Monday morning to drive a forklift. The guy makes like 200k a year. But yeah there are no women out there and there is nothing to do besides get rich. If you already have a girl then I would say stay. Also shout out to fellow Canadian. Undefeated in Olympic hockey this year
I would stay put and just go the MBA route. I recently finished my MBA and it is near impossible to get into IB without previous experience (capital markets related) in Canada. They are no longer willing to take operational risk to retrain someone and would rather take someone who has done the work before. Not to say it's impossible, but the networking would have to be executed flawlessly (and MBA would give you time for it).
My background is in engineering and I spent some time at Fort Mac. I moved there from Toronto to make bank and then left when I bought a house. I'm not sure what your background is, but you would probably have more luck with finding a PE firm that deals in O&G and working on the due diligence/operations side. You would get some deal exposure that way and maybe move on after. Or you could work in equity research, they are more open to non-finance backgrounds. You could then gain the modelling and finance skills to make a transfer in the future.
Get out of that shithole. The money doesn't compensate for the shit life you have to deal with in your prime time, not to mention the useless skills you are acquiring.
These additional details change things quite a bit. I don't think $200k a year would be enough to make me move to this place.
Agree with Addinator, not sure any job has zero transferable skills. Even if you're not in your forever job, I don't think the alternative you mentioned is worth it unless the current quality of life is horrible. It sounds like you have great career leverage for someone your age, so make sure you don't jump too soon.
Lol should have read the 4-5 comments before me.
Yeah... That's how I feel. I wish those had come in before I replied. Now that I've looked at pictures on google from up there... I think i get it.
Oil sands money- it's a beautiful thing.
There is a small amount of IB in Calgary, have you tried starting there?
I myself just came back from a week long visit to an Oilsands site on a work related trip. It is grim up there, I would not take any amount of money to endure that sort of lifestyle. My advice would be to take the commercial banking job. At least its finance related, and if its in Calgary (which I'm assuming it is) you would have a good chance to develop working relationships with other finance people from banks and O&G companies, as well as networking with investment banks here.
Did you do a Bcomm from the U of A by any chance?
I work in O&G in Calgary. You are making a lot, even for Fort Mac. Is your housing paid for? You have a great shot at getting a role within an OG company. Why do you want IB anyway, most of those guys just try to move in house into some BD, acquisitions and or supply / trading type roles / environments. You will still take a massive cut (50% + cut, maybe more). Likely get an offer around 60-70 plus 15% bonus if you move into OG. But you will have an awesome long term career track and for the uber motivated you can make big money long term, plus your lifestyle is pretty cushy overall and in a decent city. Hold out and make a good strategic move, don't take something you don't want. Work on your resume and networking skills and aim for OG. Trust me, I had sights set on finance and what I found out was that most those guys just went back in house and I was easily on par or ahead of them. Plus it will be easier to structure your resume for that vs IB cause oil companies like to see you had exposure up there...
If it's anything like Fubar 2 then it looks pretty awesome to me.. Please advise
I guarantee you can always get a commercial banking job or something similar to what you are getting now. Milk the golden goose for all its worth and be smart with your money. Then make a career switch. I really don't see the rush.
This is what you really should do.
1) don't take that job at 70k
2) live life like you're making 70k and stash that extra $110k (well, post tax) and DO NOT TOUCH IT EVER. Maybe just invest it in SPY.
3) take the next 4 weeks off. Then immediately take the GMAT prep course. You should be done in 3 months. Really buckle down to score 720+.
4) you should have 8 months until the level 3 CFA. Begin your review
5) continue in your job for as long as you can up to 3 years.
6) if you get fired, immediately begin the process for MBA applications and essays.
7) think about who could write your recommendations
In 2 -3 years you should have cash to fund and MBA. Stay at your job. If you're going for an MBA, then it doesn't matter what you did before since you should be switching careers. Just be able to spin your past in a great way. You'll have several year's work experience, a CFA, MBA, and should be a great candidate to switch careers as long as you are likable and don't blow interviews. Just remember that once you're done with an MBA (which could be all in 5 years) you'll drop down to 100k salary + bonus (which very often banks fuk you over on). By then you would've cleared 200, maybe 250k) at your old job. And you may hate banking like most people. DO NOT ROMANTICIZE BANKING.
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