Hey all, still new to this site so don't shoot me
I'm an undergrad at a target school, GPA ~3.7 with hard dual-major, and I'll hopefully have decent experience later on. I'm currently working a UBS pwm job, and I'm a rising sophomore so I'm hoping to get more experience later on (boutiques) before aiming for BB, ideally GS/MS/JPM but whatever.
But hold up, I'm not sure if this is all right for me. I have the option to take the other major route (consulting) and aim for MBB, which perhaps I haven't given enough credit to. The big thing is simply that... 100 hours a week is a hell of a f-cking lot. I always knew it was 90-100 but never really sank in till I started working full time this summer, ~40 hours a week. How do I know that banking is still for me? How do you people stand it? The most unassuring and scary thing is that, PE isn't much better for work hours...
Be honest with me. Do you have to be a money loving prick, or a egotistical prestige whore to be the "ideal" fit for IB? I'm not saying I'm not either of them, but I'm definitely hesitant about taking 2 years out of my life drowning in work. I'm obviously on this site, so you can already have a hint as to how I view my career, but at the same time I really enjoy being a lazy asshole sometimes.
Or am I just being a total pussy. Again be honest with me and share experiences and what you think makes a good "fit" for IB and beyond.
Disclaimer: I've never done a PWM internship, so my view might not be complete. However, my first internship did involve a good bit of (semi) cold calling, which is what I suspect you're doing a lot of.
That said, I'm about to finish my rising-senior internship with an investment bank, and the difference between what I did rising-sophomore summer vs this year is like night & day. It was a good job and the people were nice, but the work was fairly dull and what the company did was not exciting (to me) at all. This summer I've built models, been a major contributor to presentations that went directly to clients' senior management, worked with a tech client that has an amazing high-tech product, and been staffed on equity raises and M&A deals. This is much more exciting and far different than what I did before and what you're probably doing with PWM.
Sure, I've worked some long hours, but if you actually enjoy what you're doing, they're not nearly as bad as it sounds. Even though I worked less two summers ago, it was more of a grind because it simply wasn't as stimulating, or dare I say "fun".
My advice: if you're interested in IB at all, get an internship next summer with the best bank you can get with-it's difficult to get a bulge-bracket as a sophomore, but lots of smaller places have no problem with them. You'll either find that you love it and thus be set up really well for junior recruiting/full-time recruiting, or you'll hate it but still have a great thing to put on your resume (for MBB or whatever you decide to pursue).
Good luck
You'll be working just as long hours at MBB. An analyst stint is only 1-2 years. I'm sure you can tough it out.
I suggest you get an internship at a BB during the summer and see for yourself.
Then, you will be able to answer the question you had in mind.
Not all people are fit for IB or at least they prefer something else to banking. At the end of the day, doing something that may be of your interest will cancel out the noise.
Cheers,
Q
Just get an IB internship, see if you like it. If you don't you can still do pretty much anything you want.
Being successful in IB is more about being thorough and persistent than being smart. If you're smart you'll probably be able to model a little faster than the next guy but you'll only be modeling around 10% of the time.
A majority (90%+) of your job will be creating presentations in power point and scrubbing comps for valuations and in both cases your company will have templates for you to work with. So ask yourself, are you able to go through ten 10k's and 10q's in order to find one time adjustments to normalize your comps? And are you able to sift through multiple power points and make small changes in them (footnotes) and not make mistakes? And after you're sure you're done, when your associate finds an error in your PPT can you go back again and make changes through every page? After that you have to hop on CapitalIQ in order to update market caps, fund sizes, latest investments, and debt numbers for your firm's financial sponsors book. And this book has 50 companies so you'll have to run through 50 searches on capiq before you're done. This is the reality of the job and it's why I say it takes more persistence than brains to succeed.
The successful guys are the ones who say "this doesn't look right" and keeps poking around and searching until they find what makes their book look incorrect. They're also the same guys who read every single footnote on where the "Other current liabilities" items get listed out so they can see where the debt or depreciation is buried.
So think about whether you can do this when on a Wednesday night your friends are meeting up for happy hour, all the other analysts are booking it, and you're stuck there finding adjustments and fixing footnotes.
Thanks cik11, that's really helpful stuff. Much appreciated
Sounds like quite a bit of financial analysis... and then you take broker consensus EBITDA (which is all projected on an inconsistent basis) and plot a scatter chart of FY1 EV/EBITDA against FY1-3 EBITDA CAGR. The regression works out great, because having a huge outlier results in an R-squared of 85% (no one who's left school for more than 2 years knows what 'standard error' means anyway). Because your client's EBITDA growth is epic, they will definitely be afforded a premium rating. Unfortunately, you lose the sell-side pitch, but that's okay, because now you can now pitch to 20 potential buyers.
I Need Honest Assessment (Is IB, S&T, etc. a Good Fit for Career?) (Originally Posted: 03/19/2017)
Hi all, I'd like to first start with an apology if this post may come off gratingly naive or indecisive or demanding, etc.
I am currently a freshman at a non-target school. I have always really admired the stock market and the idea of trading to make money when I was younger, but I never realistically considered a typical Wall St. career within my reach (I just assumed it was for rich people when I was younger and I should have done something more secure; I grew up poor). When I found out that my school has a decent network in banking, PE, hedge funds, the likes, I realized that I may actually have a shot at a job in finance.
And so, I began looking into quant trading,, IB, or S&T (mostly IB so far, I admit). I am currently majoring in Finance and Math and fairly confident that I want to stick with a more quantitative career path in business throughout my life. I plan on eventually getting a Ph.D in math in the very far future (although maybe this is not realistic or relevant to this issue?) I think this might help me with breaking into quant trading, but obviously I should be building my career earlier. I have been told by career counselors and professors at my school who have backgrounds in investment that going into quant trading essentially requires a Ph.D in a quantitative field or being utterly brilliant, neither of which apply to me.
S&T seems to be the trading job I had always admired when I was younger, however I keep hearing about the very high attrition rates and apparently very little transferable skills that comes with the job (I am also terrified of getting fired if I do pursue this career path and make it anywhere).
Becoming an IB analyst and working my way up the corporate ladder or breaking off to PE, hedge funds, etc. was what I mainly focused on this school year. However, I have heard horror stories about the lifestyle in this career and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. My career is my main focus in my life but I also want to become an illustrator on the side (I always had a natural drawing aptitude, which I still have retained, that I didn't get the chance to develop because I foolishly drowned myself in schoolwork that I hated). I knew that I needed to have spare time to myself in order to pursue my secondary goal, which I really do hold dear to me. I mainly started off looking into trying to become an analyst because I also heard that people who finish their 2 year gig after their internship leave with a very strong skill set in valuation and financial analysis (broadly speaking). This was the main reason why IB came off very attractive to me: I want to develop my skill set in finance. I can firmly say that I wanted to do IB to develop myself than for the money (....although money is also very nice and is still important to me, don't get me wrong aha). However, I also hear from some people who didn't really get much out of their years as an analyst.
I would really appreciate it if anyone could give me an honest assessment for whether or not working in any FO position is the right fit for me. I would really love to work in a FO job but I am just unsure if I will be able to make it, honestly. Working hard is not an issue for me, it's more of personality type/career goals issue, I think.
My apologies if I come off as an idiot and may have offended anyone. Also, sorry if I was being too vague in the details of my problem, I'll try to be responsive to anyone who would be willing to honestly help me out. If FO jobs are not meant for me, then I really need the (constructive) slap in the face now rather than later. If this career path doesn't work out for me, I am going to stick with my original plan and start studying for the actuary tests (my original plan starting school was to become an actuary). However, I need to know which career I should start grooming myself for now before it's too late and I run out of time to really prepare and develop myself for whatever I end up choosing.
Other than that, I hope you all have a nice day. Thank you.
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