firms that hire UG for corp/buisness development

harvardgrad08From personal experience, working in corpdev at a F500 tech firm, I can tell you the following:

• Business Development: Actually most firms don't hire undergrads for this. Most of the people in these groups are relatively seasoned (5+ years of experience) as their entire job is to negotiate commercial deals, etc. Some have bizdev analysts roles but I've noticed that these are relatively rare (at least in tech).

• Corporate Strategy / Corporate Development: Most hire people either at the post analyst (2+ years experience) or at the MBA level. However, there are some firms that hire at the undergrad level including (just based off the ones I know or have seen posted):

• Disney
• Home Depot
• General Mills
• NBC / Universal
• Kraft
• Best Buy
• Non-F500 Firms (many hire at the UG level)

Your best bet if you dont want to do banking and want to join a corpdev/strat team then go to a finance leadership program / rotation program at a top F500 as many top analysts from these programs end up in these kinds of roles.

Harvardgrad,

I was flipping through your corporate development thread and had a quick question, which I feel may be relevant to this thread based on your response that I quoted above. I will be attending a masters of accounting at a traditional semi-target school and, if I do well and network, should have a decent shot at F100 financial analyst positions, F500 FLDPs, and definitely Big 4 audit with at least an outside shot at Big 4 TAS. Obviously, IBD/top-tier consulting and then TAS are the best options for getting into corp dev later, but between the other options (finance at a well-known F100, FLDP at a lesser known but still F500 company, or Big 4 Audit), what would be the best bet for moving into corp dev eventually?

The conventional wisdom in accounting is that Big 4 > Finance anything for industry jobs, but that conventional wisdom also generally applies to FP&A, controller, or industry accounting jobs, which aren't that appealing to me (with the exception of FP&A). Would it be better if corp dev is the goal to reject the Big 4 in favor of the others or which option would be best in your opinion? I'm going to gun hard for IB/Consulting/TAS, but I also recognize that those won't be easy to get coming from an accounting background, so I was wondering what your thoughts on that were.

EDIT: I also realize that you said in that same post I quoted that FLDPs are typically the best option, but I'm mostly asking because a lot of people say that Big 4 can easily lead to some of the coveted positions that are usually reserved for top FLDPs. I wanted to see, however, if that was truly the case in your experience or if it's just rhetoric used by people who work at the Big 4.