Business development: Pretty much every firm in the world hires UGs to this position.

Corp. dev.: Different story.

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Best Response

From 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.

 
harvardgrad08:
From 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.

 

with transitioning into corporate strategy / corporate development 2+ years after consulting, how do you find out about these opportunities. is it applying online or is head hunters or what?

 

hey harvardgrad, thanks for the reply. just a follow up or two, is there any particular time frame for recruiting? Additionally I have been going on goog/ microsoft etc pages and it is difficult to tell what these job rolls are actually going to be doing. Any advice with that?

 

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