I'm graduating this December from a target school with degrees in engineering and finance and a strong GPA. However, I never dove head first into recruiting and rather than landing a role doing BB IB, MBB, or tech, I have a full-time lined up in REPE.
I've never been sure of what career path I fit into, but I definitely never thought I was a real estate person. People who know me give me weird looks and wonder why I didn't land a more "prestigious" or "elite" job out of undergrad and I don't really have an answer for them. Sometimes I feel regret and FOMO for missing out on the more typical paths to strong careers.
Do any of you guys have experience being in a field you're not sure you're passionate about, or ended up somewhere that is atypical for your background? Where are you now and how do you feel about it?
8.5.5
REPE is definitely "prestigious" and "elite," if that's all you care about. 99% of people are not hopping into REPE gigs right out of school, elite school or no. But even that aside, just live your life in peace. You're not some layabout wasting your life and education; you're just working your first job out of school and trying out something new, just like all those other kids chastising you for not having a "better" job.
Lol, clearly posted this out of insecurity so random WSO people can tell you that your REPE job is elite and prestigious
Yup, woe is me. Glad I have a job lined up but it's not at all what I've studied for and my interest isn't there. Not looking for prestige but usually that's part of the payoff for taking a job you're not passionate about like being an IB analyst. Just looking for thoughts from other people who ended up in first jobs misaligned from their initial interests.
You’re the one who applied and then accepted the offer - you’re the one making moves in this direction.
You haven’t really mentioned your desires.
I guess RE isn't the most "elite" role out college, most people realize this and either couldn't get into the "elite" roles, or they actually like RE. I wouldn't worry about the opinions of others just focus on yourself and see if you can land something you actually want. I have a question for you though, why didn't you foucs on fields you wanted? Even if you didn't go all in on recruiting, you didn't do any research? I'm not trying to be condescending, just want to know more about how your situation ended up the way it did.
Gist is a connection I made early in college gave me a job working for his private REPE firm in the UK, and then during recruiting over the next two years all my best offers came from REPE due to that initial experience. Anytime I mentioned I had a REPE offer outstanding to other industries I was recruiting for, the interviews stopped pretty quickly after as I guess they thought I was too invested in RE. Made that mistake a few too many times and walked away with only offers in REPE.
I was TOTALLY going to give you a very good, insightful answer, but redever did it for me lmao. I won’t lie to you, IB was all I wanted coming into undergrad, all I saw was the “prestige” and how sexy the job was, but luckily had a revelation that RE was a much better fit. If you really want out of REPE it won’t be impossible, but while you’re in it, be open to it. Don’t let yourself not enjoy it because it’s not the high paying, elite job you might have gotten.
OP, please take this as it is intended, to help you and be honest.
This attitude about this job is not going to lead you to success. If you start this job thinking this way, I doubt you will be a top performer. Plenty others will look at such a job and be dying to have it, some of those will be sitting next to you at this firm and in roles above you.
In fairness, it's really hard to know what you want while in UG, it's not really fair to expect people to be passionate about a path just because. Frankly, I am not convinced you would be happier in IB, MBB, or tech; if you really thought so, you would have put more effort into actually getting hired there. That is a wide range, investment banking to consulting to tech? I mean that's just the menu of "top tier b-school landing spots", might as well consider a law degree and/or med school and round it out.
Frankly, I don't think you should feel bad about that at all. It's not easy to find a passion, and a LOT of people taking those jobs (including REPE out of UG frankly) are faking it and will end up hating the job/firm/industry. The IB and MBB world practically counts on the fact that 50% of new hires will jump off by end of year three they design around it. IB analyst type roles are not designed to be enjoyable, they are grunt work that is highly paid (I suspect your lack of a "I want to die to be in IB" attitude had more than anything with your lack of success in landing there, but that is rough guess at best). Most jobs first few years out of UG are like that, even in real estate.
The cool part of career comes later, but you will get there faster when you figure out what you want to do. This job will not be your last, that I will guarantee. If you can figure out what you are actually passionate about and want to do (whether you are ordering off the top-tier career menu or not.....), and this will be a whole lot easier and a lot more fun.
I should add on..... the real estate world is full of people, very very passionate and wanting to be here. Just check out the threads on the RE forum... tons of "IB to REPE/Development can I do it?" or "Help, stuck at MBB how do I get to real estate?". Note, fewer from Tech to real estate, but it happens (I think people like tech jobs if I had to guess, or its just too far field to real estate to be seen as a legit exit vector).
Many of those in real estate discovered and are hooked (and find IB/MBB/corp fin/etc. boring AF), some get this way while in undergrad, but much rarer. Those i've met while in UG aiming/dedicated for real estate tend to be pretty fucking successful. Like seeing the posts of a guy like @MaxEbic" tells me he is 100% one of those, and he and his kind get a major advantage because it takes so much of the rest of the industry to hate their IB jobs (or accounting/corp fin/consulting/law/etc.) before realizing real estate was the answer that when they transition, they are actually behind those who started right out of UG.
I'm much farther down my career (late 30's for general idea), and I've talked to many people trying to get into real estate. Just last week I had a networking call with someone literally at a MBB shop (like one of the actual three initialed firms) who was wanting to talk to me to strategize on how to jump in to institutional real estate. The difference in prestige was zero factor (really you have to be in IB/MBB to see it as prestige IMHO, the real estate world and other firms are not filled with people looking to go that route or generally wishing they had).
So, I say all this for a reason, perhaps you have been given a major gift. You may have won a big prize, but you have to decide if you want to accept it or not. Before making any decision, you should ask yourself a simple question "Why do so many people want to leave IB/MBB to come to REPE", it's not just on WSO, its in the real world too!
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