Do I stand a chance in Investment Banking?
I got my MBA in 2011 but have been working as a business intelligence analyst for financial services firms since 2012. I know SQL, Tableau, Python, R, Big Data and Excel. I'm thinking of going into IB since that's all I have ever wanted to be. I tried to get into IB in 2012 but couldn't get anything and I needed a job badly so I went into Business Intelligence. I'm 34 now and I'm about to take an IB bootcamp with IBI in the Dallas, TX area. I am very committed to learning financial modelling etc. What do you think are my chances of getting given my age and my experience. Please help.
Really hate to burst your bubble but your chances are basically zero. Having an MBA means you can't come in as an analyst and your time as a business intelligence analyst (need maybe a little more background on what that means) would make it incredibly hard to come in as an associate (that and associates are either hired having previously been senior analysts lateraling in or coming out of B school). Your best bet is to try and sell your self as a financials services banking guy to a small boutique or business broker, but there likely won't be too much modeling.
You might be able to switch into corporate finance and get a little bit of a modeling bent there but to be brutally honest, you should see if you can get your money back on the class.
By business intelligence I mean collecting and transforming financial data and using the transformed data to create reports and dashboards showing metrics used for decision-making
It will be very difficult but not 100% impossible. I graduated from MBA a few years ago. Recently made the switch into IBD (at a small boutique). What made it possible was that the managing partner was an MBA grad from my program (top 10 mba) and I had corp dev experience in whichI worked on several M&A deals.
See if you can reach out to b-school alums who are at boutique firms.
Thank you I will start doing that. On a side bar I did not get my MBA from a top 10 school
yeah usually people on this site like to go out of their way to be unhelpful and make IB sound way harder than it is to get into (not that it is not hard), but I'm going to say that BBs, EBs, and top MMs are likely impossible for you mainly due to your age and lack of relevant experience. if you were an engineer per se you could have gotten picked up by an oil and gas coverage team due to your sector expertise, but since this is not the case, it'll be very hard.
if you really want to do IB, i suggest you target boutiques find people who made a late transition similar to yourself. maybe there is a md who got into banking a little bit later. boutiques are more open to taking on mba analysts too. when networking make sure you target older people regardless of their position as it will allow you to relate to them better to build rapport.
i actually like your skill set and think you could go for a career in trading or quantitative finance, but i'm not sure how to navigate such a move. may i ask what about IB interests you? at a boutique you could take a huge pay cut compared to status quo and on top of that, be bossed around by younger superiors. if you are after prestige and money, i'm sure with your mba you can find another avenue to achieve both. it's alright to accept the ib ship has sailed as you can still be very successful and wealthy without it.
Thanks Randhawa. I really appreciate your insight. I got my MBA with the aim of going into IB. But yeah life happened and I couldn't get in when I graduated from the MBA so I went into business intelligence and analytics. Somehow my passion for IB hasn't waned so I was wondering if I still have a shot. I'm currently considering Financial Engineering and IB and hence my decision to take the financial modelling class.
Where did you get your MBA?
cameron university in lawton, oklahoma
People usually come here for no other than external validation. The posts about which T-5 schools to accept offers from, or about which of the top 3 EBs vs top BBs to accept, or even if they’re 3.95 and 800 gmat score is good enough to get them far. You’re coming here with some old age, some MBA no one’s ever heard of, and a separate industry seeking validation. Well you're probably not gonna get it. For the former people, it’s obvious that at some point they can potentially land the coveted role, they just don’t have the balls to go out and get it. For you, maybe you have the balls but not the right background. So, it’s up to you to change the story, because I don’t think anyone on this site will believe you can do it.
No you don't because of your age/experience.
Why investment banking?
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