Dont give up ! FAS -> Laid off -> Product Manager Offer

Hi everyone, I've been on this forum for 3-4 years now, ever since my senior year, when I found out about WSO. I have absorbed a lot from this forum, about the financial services industry, and financial thinking in general.

Too long to read: Don't give up on your job search !

Undergraduate:

Non-target undergraduate, top 40 school. The institution did not have a finance major and it still has not established one. I studied math and economics. Double major hurt my GPA a little bit. I found out about the finance industry during the winter break of my senior year. By then, I knew it was likely too late for me to go into anything like full-time recruiting at banks, since I knew so little.
After graduation, I managed to secure an internship at a very small buyside M&A advisory shop. The work was super tedious. I was only doing very basic qualitative research: googling and compiling very vague data into Excel sheets. After almost 3 months, I quit, as I was not really learning anything. Another important factor was the founder/boss. He liked to tell his interns about the philanthropy he was doing and the new sports car he just rented. Not really where I wanted to stay.

Foot in the door:

I somehow managed to secure an off-cycle, long term equity research internship at a lower middle-market bank. It was in the west coast, and for those of you who do ER in the west coast, you know the lifestyle. I grew a lot there, both in terms of my soft skills, work ethic, the ability to handle pressure, and my ability to produce high-quality work products. It was a struggle at first, but I managed to work for half a year.
I decided not to stay. Surprisingly, lifestyle was not the deal breaker, it was the MD. He micro-managed too much for me to have the desire to transition into a full-time role and continue to work for him in the next 2 years. A couple months after I left, another long-term intern --- we are basically analysts who are paid like interns, considering the amount of work and the kind of work we do --- left the team, and then a couple months later, a full-time research associate left as well. A few months later, another VP-level research associate finally became a senior analyst, an MD, which means my orignal MD has no one to use right now, except maybe 1-2 poorly-paid interns.

MSF and Networking:

I went home for about 2 months before I went to the MSF program, hoping to jump from there. I was glad that the business school I went to indeed has a lot of resources and a ton of alumni working in finance. I networked heavily. I'm from China (been here 7 years) and before I went to the MSF program, I would wake up around 4:30 or 5am every morning at home to get on networking calls. Didn't remember exactly how many calls I made. I was focusing on middle market banks and some boutiques, as I knew BBs and EBs would be highly competitive. Built some great connections over the phone, and got some cold welcomes too.

I had 2 contacts pushing my resume for me before school started. I thought I did well in both, especially for one MM, where I networked with 6-7 people in the office. The associate who was interviewing me even said this: hey, you are here because you've done your homework. For this round, let's just chat. After this one, go prepare for technicals for the next 1-2 rounds. Eventually, they did not let me pass that round.

I continued to interview. IB, PE, Corp Dev, FP&A, anything related that I could fetch. One big issue was the sponsorship. Since I need a work sponsorship, almost all banks I networked with, stopped sponsoring getting into the 2018-2019 recruiting cycle, including 2 banks where I knew sponsored my friends who pushed resume for me.
During November, 2018, I passed 3 rounds of interviews for a global tech firm's corp deve team, only waiting for the 4th round's result to come out. The first 3 rounds were great: all interviewers let me pass on the spot. The director, who interviewed me for the 3rd round, told me this before we ended the conversation: I've already put you in the final round. I like you a lot and I want to hire you. Prepare well for the last round.
The last one was with a C-level guy from Japan/Korea, and we were having a difficult time communicating since his English was not very good. He also asked me one totally unexpected, but very thought-provoking question: what do you want to do after 20 years? Tbh, I've never thought beyond 10 years before, only vaguely about 20 years.
I waited for 5 weeks and I had calls with the HR every week. Finally, she told me they decided not to hire candidates.

Before the 1-year program ended, I interviewed for about 50 companies in total, not counting the rounds of interviews. I know this number might not be a lot for some of you here, but I really tried everything I could do to get interviews and pass them. I stopped crazily throwing out resumes around April, seeing very few available positions for me to target.

FAS job offer:

In June, one day I got an email from a company about a FAS consultant position. I did not even remember when I sent my resume, but I said yes.
1st round was a 30 minute interview with a director, who later sat next to me in the office. Half technicals, half unexpected but reasonable questions such as : you took a course in group theory, tell me about it. Okay.
2nd round was a bit surprising: they asked me to come to NYC for an on-site assessment, which consists of two parts: the 1st part is a one-hour written test: math, finance, logic, and reading. The 2nd part was a case study, more like a consulting-type than a finance case study.

I was super close to the answer for the case study before time ran out. I didn't think I did too well on that test.

To my surprise, the next day, the director called. I passed, and they wanted me to go to the office for a final round, which consists of two parts: a 1.5-hour financial case study, basically strategy analysis a DCF modeling, and a 30-40 minute Partner interview. I did something wrong for the case study, a small mistake, the director said it was fine. I did well on the Partner interview. It was the Partner and another director.

My only complain was, they did not reimburse my flight tickets or hotel expenses, not even after I started working there. The expense issue came out later on the job, many times.

I took the offer 7 days later, the same day they extended it.
Thinking about it, I should have given myself more time to decide: later, I had interviews at GIC/Temasec, and got an offer at a Charlotte-based IB boutique, who gave me a meaningfully higer salary. I decided for the FAS role since the clients (Carlyle, Blackstone) and deals they work on are global and high-profile. Plus, I do not know anyone in Charlotte, and I want to be in NYC.
Indeed, I got great exposure and I learned a lot.

Laid-off:

Learned a lot, but not as much as I wanted to. In March, ess than 6 months into my job, I got laid-off. The Global Head quoted declining revenue and the virus. I did not blame or yell, negotiated a severance package, took care of paperwork, and started editing my resume the next day. My MD, a fellow analyst, and my manager all got laid off on the same day. The Partner quoted a large decline in revenue YoY.
I had many calls with headhunters as well as direct interviews over the following 2.5-3 months. Over 85-90% of them did not sponsor, once they heard my situation. Some calls only lasted for 10-15 seconds because of this, including a couple valuation positions at EBs, who to my surprise, do not sponsor, Maybe they only sponsor summer analysts who turn full-time.
Again, I casted a very wide net: research, IB, PE (my experience has been in renewable and infrastructure), corp deve, project finance, asset management, fintech (I touted my self-learned programming skills and put some sample projects on GitHub), quant finance (I'm a math major after all, although I did not pass the 2nd rounds because it's been too long). Got very close with a couple firms, but eventually did not pass. I was focusing on building sample models to demonstrate my modeling ability --- I don't build models very fast, but I wanted to show I could do it.
On a 1-hr build-from-scratch, forecast 5 years, and DCF modeling exercise, I panicked, and fumbled.

Product Manager Offer:

I have been taking online courses in product management, programming, and brushing up on finance interview questions, such as the WSO guide. I see PM as a route I want to be in, because after thinking hard for 3-4 months, I realized I want to build a product, and start a company. It's very risky since I really don't have much in savings, and it would be time-consuming since I need to learn iOS development. However, I figured out that if I could get a job in product management, I'll have a valuable skill in becoming an entrepreneur.

4 rounds of interview: first 2 rounds with PMs. One guy is a Stern MBA. His background is similar to mine. 3rd round is a Yale MBA, who has built his whole career in IT/Tech companies. He tries to warn me about the salary negotiation: "young man, you are lucky to be alive and maybe have a job in 2020 !"

4th/final round: the HR. Salary came out okay, total comp 250K+ in CNY/RMB. With my 1-2 years of experience, I won't call this salary bad: it is comparable to BAT's offer, with a lower bonus structure.

I'm still looking for other good opportunities, but the deadline of taking the offer is approaching, and I do not want to take a huge risk in 2020.

For those of you who got laid off as well, or those of non-targets who are struggling to break into finance or IB, don't give up ! Maybe you walk slowly, but as long as you walk, you will get somewhere. It may not be the place you want the most, but you won't fail yourself either.

I know this post is super long, and I hope it is helpful to some of you here. Thank you all.