IB SA No Offer -> Major Entertainment Strategy + Perspectives on Recovering from Failure
Always wanted to do one of these, and I suppose I have time now given quarantine haha!
A lot of time and energy is spent on this forum communicating the importance of receiving a return offer after your junior year internship in investment banking / consulting, but not as much is communicated about how to recover after you don't receive a full-time offer. A couple years ago, I was one of those X% of summer interns that didn't receive a full-time offer after my summer in banking, and frankly I initially thought my long-term goals were dead on arrival. Now, I work in corporate strategy at a major film / entertainment company after a couple years in another major media / entertainment firm's strategy group post-undergrad. Without giving too much away on the firms to protect my identity, these firms are typically seen as two of the most prestigious within the industry and my fears about the long-term prospects of my career seem silly in retrospect.
Given the relative prestige of the media / entertainment industries as well as the uncertainty around internships due to COVID-19, I thought I'd share some perspectives I've developed since my unsuccessful IB internship my junior summer and fostered what I believe is now a fairly successful career. I remember what it was like to be a scared-shitless college senior worried about his future, and I hope the perspectives I share below are helpful to anyone who needs it on this forum as this forum was really helpful to me over the years. In addition, happy to provide advice to anyone seeking roles in the industry.
1. If you don't receive a return offer, don't be bitter - be reflective.
You may have failed in your initial endeavor, but a bend in the road is not the end of the road. Seems trite in retrospect, but life does go on and you now have an opportunity to let your next couple steps define you instead of your last failure. You're best served by taking the time your senior year to be analytical about why you didn't get a return offer. If the market's bad and you didn't receive a return offer because of economic pressures on the bank, then you need to do some thinking about where you stood in relation to your fellow SAs. But typically in your 'exit interview' they'll explain to you why you didn't get a return offer - spun your wheels too much, had a hard time navigating office politics, weak technical skills on PPT / Excel, whatever. At the end of day there was a set of skills you did not exhibit that you needed to. You need to be relentless about mitigating the flaws that hindered your ability to be successful during your internship because those competencies never go away. If you want to work in strategy, finance, or corporate development long-term, you will always have to double-check numbers in decks, format slides properly, and work in intense team settings to achieve common goals. At an even more basic level, all of this boils down to you not being the best teammate you could've been, and you need to make sure you don't hamstring your chances of success at your next role by cutting that shit out ASAP. Which brings me to my next point...
2. Focusing on being the best teammate you can be will help you throughout your career.
I'm big on sports, having played varsity athletics in college and eventually working with the industry extensively in my analyst stint, and I find it helpful to orient my career around being the best teammate I can possibly be. This way, you don't take constructive criticism personally - it is just guidance on steps you need to take to 'level up'. I want to be a good teammate, and I think everyone else does too. This attitude I believe helps us become a little more selfless and - dare I say - compulsive about being good to the people we work with, whether that means by going the extra mile on your deliverables or taking the time to prep before meetings.
3. Everyone comes to their transition point at some time or another. A No-Offer is a great time to accelerate your long-term goals.
I'd always known that I wanted to go into the media industry, and I viewed banking as a way to gain experience before transitioning into a Corporate Strategy / Development role in the field. Not getting a return offer made it incredibly hard to recruit at other banks, so I had to go all-in on recruiting for the media industry. Yeah, there were plenty of times my senior year where I was afraid of being a failure. I attended a top school (think HYPSM) so the pressure from my colleagues to be effortlessly successful felt intense, especially given most if not all of them were extended return offers. To give you a sense of the shitty culture some of these schools foster, I was even publicly ridiculed for not getting a return offer at one point my senior year in one of my social circles. That was one of the worst nights of my life. But I kept my head down, had faith, and took a gamble that worked out.
Years later, many of those who made fun of me are now asking for my recommendations / references to break into my industry from investment banks / private equity firms. I get a kick out of people thinking my job is cool or telling me they'd read about some of the deals I've worked on in the newspaper, though I used to be a little bitter. Now I just realize that everyone has their own come to Jesus moment about the jobs that are typically considered 'the path' post-undergrad at top schools. Some people go through their entire careers and love banking and make MD. Others hated their internship. Some people say 'fuck this' during their analyst stint. Careers are long, your interests will change, and weird shit happens. For everyone I know who went from banking to PE, I know 2 others that ended up doing something else like Product Management or Corporate Development or even teaching. Stuff happens. I kept my head down and decided to define success not by whether I received a banking offer, but by whether I received offers at firms I actually wanted to work at. That mindset shift has led to some pretty great professional successes in my opinion, and the best part is that I defined success on my own terms.
Still, I know it's hard to feel this way when you're in your senior fall and everyone seems to be enjoying their signing bonus...which brings me to my next point...
4. Play the long game.
I had this moment my senior year where I closed my eyes and imagined my best self. I imagined myself doing a lot of the work bankers do - decks, spreadsheets, whatever - and then leaving my office for a meeting and stepping out into a movie lot. I had this vision that I was going to be a BSD in film / entertainment. When I opened my eyes, I realized it didn't matter if I did banking or not as long as I got my shot in that field and ran with it, which is especially important in a field like media where so many people want to break in but the industry really just values experience / man-hours / 'insider' knowledge. It's one thing to talk high-level banker-ese about Netflix's content strategy, for example, and another to actually be able to talk through the ins and outs of content deal structures, valuation methods, industry dynamics... This led me to go all-in on media / entertainment. I decided to play the long game.
Careers are long. It's crazy - when you're in undergrad you can differentiate between jobs and choose one or the other because one job pays $20K more. But the more you go along, you realize $20K often turns out to be rounding errors... you can negotiate +$20K in a lot of jobs just by coming to your recruiter with a strong argument. I took a large (30 - 40%) paycut relative to what I would've made as an average IB analyst my first year, but I was doing the work I wanted to do that I knew would set me apart in the industry I cared about. That pay difference was mitigated less than 2 years later. Everyone talks about comp, but it's hard to conceptualize as a senior in college just how variable comp really can be.
Even more broadly speaking, a lot of my friends in banking - even at top firms - either did not land the PE jobs they wanted or didn't receive offers during the regular timeline. Shit happens. No one's career is a straight line, as trite as it sounds. Which makes me thankful...
5. Always find a reason to be thankful.** I'm thankful for not having received a return offer my senior year.
Don't get me wrong - all things equal, it's better to have an offer than not even if it's not what you want to do long term. But not receiving a return offer forced me to lean into my interests. Better yet, it's taught me to be calm when I think things aren't going exactly according to my career plan. When you're operating from a place of weakness - say, a no-offer - you'll go into interviews stressed and worried and diffident. If you operate from a place of strength, your arguments in interviews shift from what value the jobs can provide to you to what value you can provide to the job. Since my no-offer, I'm now much more confident in my career path, my strengths and weaknesses, and how I navigate through times of duress. If you ever find yourself in a tight spot professionally, find reasons to be thankful - the process will calm you down and you will think more rationally.
In any case, I hope the above is helpful and not solipsistic. Happy to give any more insight on specific steps I took if helpful, but I hope the above is good high-level guidance.
Cheers monkeys!
Fantastic! Should be a must-read for students really in any field. Super inspiring and informative about methods that'll help you cope with initial failure -- and that initial failure doesn't mean career failure.
Thanks for sharing -- great post!
Thanks for sharing! As a fellow corporate strategist who left banking within a year, I feel similarly to you. Had a question on something I'm struggling with -what are you thoughts on getting a MBA or pivoting to a place where you're a revenue "generator" in a company?
Quick question to you: what do you think of your current job vs. your banking job? Pros vs. cons?
The #1 perk to my jobs out of college relative to banking: The deal exposure / profile of my work compared to banking is unreal. Granted, I worked in a non-media coverage group in banking, but most of the deals - even the $XB+ deals - are about companies that 90% of the public doesn't know. But the stuff I worked on over the past couple years in M&E are part of the cultural zeitgeist, and people ask me about it all the time (I'm always referred to as the '[insert firm name here] guy' by friends at parties lol).
Also, very little of the work is truly pointless. In banking, I felt like a lot of pitches went nowhere and, depending on the MD, some of the pitches were truly ill-advised and felt like throwing shit at a wall. But in internal strategy, everything you do has a point. You're not really kept around to spin your wheels for the sake of spinning your wheels when there isn't work. That said, that doesn't mean there isn't bullshit work: I've had to create decks / memos for senior leadership speaking at conferences / meetings with key stakeholders, etc. Plus aggregating and consolidating financial information across business units is fun the first time, meh the second, and infuriating the third and so forth. But there's a purpose to it.
Cons: There's a level of respect you're afforded when you say you're in banking or consulting that you just aren't in internal strategy, no matter how prestigious the firm, because work experiences are very variable. There's a formula to working in banking from both a recruiting standpoint and work experience standpoint. 3.6+ GPA, good undergrad, probably knows how to work long hours, etc. Because CSBD + internal strategy roles vary so much in culture, it's a little hard to be taken seriously by recruiters sometimes. But I mitigate these issues by reading, keeping up with industry trends, and networking so people know I'm a serious candidate wherever I apply.
If helpful, here's my opinion too on my choice to leave banking 1/2 through my analyst stint.
In no particular order and not MECE necessarily some of my thoughts +anecdotes
Pros - Significantly better work / balance life- I can actually take my PTO. Although going to be difficult with COVID-19, I've been encouraged to take days off regardless and have been given extra leeway to take care of personal matters with extra days off without taking PTO. I typically work 45-50 hours a week, but have had some 70 hour weeks. My hours are also predictable. My friends and family say they see me lol, I smile/laugh again, and I've regained the weight I lost in banking (become underweight over my analyst one stint)
Feeling Valued - While I feel there is great value in providing capital, I felt I did decks after decks and analysis for absolutely no point late into the weekends and nights in banking. In corporate strategy, whenever I've had to stay late, the directors, VP, etc. have been there in the office with me and I see exactly why the work is being done when I am told to run with something. It's not to say I never stay late, but it's a lot less often and other people stand up for me when they think I'm working "too hard" . Although I did get the feedback in in my banking group that I was quiet - it was clear that no matter if I spoke up in meetings, it wouldn't matter. I was just a nameless serf to work for two years and I should be grateful to be there. Now, I am often encouraged to speak up even when the CFO, COO, etc. of the very large company are in a meeting. I have also never gotten a "pls fix" and people as high up regularly express thank you and know my name. I was a resource in banking and now I am a valued team member.
Impactful work - I was pretty sure I never wanted to exit to an investing role in PE and was always interested in the "strategic" aspect of a business problem. When I was going into banking, I thought I might switch into a strategy role in the investment bank after a few years or work in VC, but definitely not PE. Perhaps I should have recruited for consulting, but felt banking recruiting was much easier. Specifically, I enjoy diving into a problem and going through the process of thinking whether we should enter x market, how should we open up post COVID-19, market/customer segmentation, working with corp dev on acquisitions. I appreciate that as a junior employee, that I don't have to focus on a specific area. I feel like I'm paid to be curious!
Cultural fit - I work with all former consultants and some direct MBA hires and they're all super fun and smart. I feel like I am genuinely mentored and don't dread dinners with them. I feel mentored as a junior person. In banking, I was always yelled at for a mistake and now I'm coached to understand the right approach. Maybe it's that I'm a woman, so all these soft things matter, but liking the people you work with makes a huge difference for me.
Exit opps - Somehow I feel like my exit opps reach outs on LinkedIn have not decreased and rather increased for more interesting start-up/corporate strategy roles. I feel much more confident interviewing for product marketing and other roles I may be interested in if I leave the bizsop/corp strategy world.
Cons
Pay - Not as highly paid as IB and I probably would have a difficult time moving to PE (but I don't even want to!). I feel like I will jump firms in a year or two for higher pay as home-grown talent doesn't move up the pay scale as fast. For now, I am content with the challenging and interesting work and I am being mentored. Also, I only have one life to live and think I make enough to enjoy life.
MBA - Lots of people in corporate strategy have a degree and I'm very unsure if it's valuable for me. I'm confident I can get into a top program with my banking + corp strategy experience if I have a good GMAT score. However, I question the ROI. My group has also expressed they are willing to sponsor me.
Bureaucracy - From what I understand, bizops/corporate strategy is not respected at many places, but I have not really seen this to be the case at our company. However, I sometimes of feel that the work doesn't "go anywhere" as a we aren't a direct profit generator.
Longevity - I often worry about next steps. Do I need to transition to a profit-generating role in my next job? Has basically staying in strategy crippled my career growth as I need to be revenue-generating for longer? What skills do I want to acquire for the long-run?
Happy to double-click on any of these or answer anything else.
For sure, appreciate the read!
Regarding pivoting to different part of the business: Frankly, I've had similar thoughts. I suppose it just depends on how you view your career - as an operator or as an advisor. One of the things I like about the corporate strategy function is the ability to look high-level at a business and, depending on where you are of course and the culture of the firm, the propensity for the strategy group to be seen as the objective arbiter across business units to provide leadership guidance. But I've always seen myself as an adviser, not an operator, and I like the feeling of having leadership's ear, so to speak.
That said, I think true professional growth potential comes from moving to a revenue-generating side of the company or at least to a business unit because strategy jobs don't really carry any risk with them. This obviously varies in truth depending on how M&A-heavy your group is. Moving to an operator role will allow you to gain a specialization. The only thing I'd say about this is that I'd wait for the right job to jump from Corp Strat as opposed to a job - go somewhere where you think you can make a deep impact as an operator and drive meaningful results in a way that'll propel you to the top. If you're not passionate about any one thing yet, maybe you'd be best served by staying generalist to continue honing your understanding of the big picture. That's the way I'd think about it - everyone's different.
Regarding MBA: In my 1:1s with leadership and people around the business, these are becoming less and less necessary if you're already in the role / industry you want. I'd only consider an MBA seriously if you want to pivot away from the type of role you're in now into something fundamentally different. For example, I've been thinking of going to consulting in a few years to serve as an advisor across M&E firms. Just something that interests me. That's done much easier through an MBA and formal OCR process. Another case where MBA makes sense is where the type of company / scale of company are fundamentally different. If you're driving results at an independent micro-studio, for example, but want to expand your horizons to a major studio like Disney or WB, an MBA may be the only time where that makes sense because lay recruiting for those Associate / Manager roles is few and far between. This isn't because you don't have the competency for the role per se, but because the lay recruiting process for much bigger firms can be competitive such that you may not be as competitive without the MBA.
Let me know if that's helpful. Happy to DM for further color.
Very informative. You were talking about exiting from corp dev. to a specific job -- can you tell us what kind of jobs corp dev. people look to exit to? Or maybe you, in particular?
Thanks! I'll think more about the advisor vs. operator role as I plan what my next steps would be in a few years. I'm toying with the idea of the MBA because I didn't go to a top "target", but in banking and my current job and I've been surrounded by them in both jobs. Possibly a bit of an impostor syndrome. I feel like it doesn't seem to be hindering opportunities much because of the stamp of banking...
This was an awesome read, thanks so much for writing this out. I'm really interested in pursuing entertainment corporate strategy groups from undergrad with a consulting background, rather than banking. Could you talk about your recruiting process for the media corp strat group you joined out of undergrad? Was there a formal application process that you were at a target school for or was it mostly networking-driven?
Broadly, media and entertainment recruiting out of undergrad is very limited. For mid-major movie studios (think Lionsgate) recruiting is extremely ad-hoc and networking-based. These teams are small and don't have typical analyst programs so while they have been known to take undergrads, my understanding is that networking is key here. Especially for LA based firms, proximity matters (think USC, UCLA kids).
Obviously, the big dog is Disney's CSBD team... they recruit like any other banking / consulting firm towards the end of the summer / start of the school year as they are competing against banks and consulting firms for talent. Things may be different now, but that's how it was back then. Sure, networking helps with those like any other job, but you're not really beating the market of qualified candidates just by networking - it may get you the job interview, but the technicals will matter a ton. Very formal application process once the job is listed on Disney Careers, and they typically look at HYPS kids (+ some UCLA, USC) with heavy media + BB IBD / consulting internship experience.
Other firms like NBCU, the NBA, and the NFL have rotational programs. These programs can double as strategy analyst stints if you are aggressive about making sure you get corporate strategy / business unit strategy group placements in your 2 years. Undergrad doesn't matter as much for these roles as they don't do OCR in the traditional sense, though obviously coming from HYPS can make a difference. Once you get the job, it's more important that you network internally to get the experience you want, and my understanding is that candidates from these roles are seen more like consulting candidates if they nail the right strategic project experiences due to the variety of project experience. However, rotational programs are definitely a higher risk move given you may not get the experience you want.
The floodgates for M&E strategy roles open a ton more after 1 - 2 years of work experience across the board.
Hey - thank you for giving such helpful info about the industry. I'm also interested in pursuing entertainment strategy but given recent circumstances, it seems more and more unlikely (I'm graduating this May). I know most strategy roles still require 2 years of banking or consulting, so if I'm trying to break in, are there any departments that are kind of related that you would recommend getting into and eventually transitioning into strategy at these entertainment companies? (Ex: FP&A, distribution, etc.?)
Went through exactly the same process after my no-offer IB SA and point #5 becomes easier every day. Really well worded post and congrats on both your success and your happiness.
Amen friend!
Great thread, SBed. I started in strategy after undergrad but moved into the business a year after because my personality tends more towards “operator” and I got in a fast track leadership program. The upwards progression in corporate strategy at my company is almost nonexistent and we constantly recruit ex MBBs with MBAs. That being said, I miss the easy access to top brass, incredible “clearance” (I could pull any number/strategy/plan about our business), staying in sweet hotels and working laidback hours.
Would you say an MBA is required? I'm currently a pre-MBA BA/AC/ASC at one of the MBB and would like to move into a corp strategy role eventually
Does anyone have further insight on respected Corp Strat & BD / Corp Dev programs that take Analysts out of undergrad? Looking to recruit for them full-time and would appreciate any recommendations. Open to other general rotational strategy & PM programs as well. Thanks!
Bump - I'd also really appreciate a list of companies with respected corp strat programs that undergrads can go straight in. Additional questions - if you work in IB for your junior summer but know you want to pivot into corp strat/consulting, is getting a return offer still important? - how do you approach recruiting for corp strat out of undergrad? Is it similar to IB, eg are cold emails for networking calls appropriate?
The return offer is still important insofar as demonstrating that you're a capable candidate, but there are many ways to spin your summer internship experience that still qualify you as a candidate even if you don't get the return offer. Generally, people are understanding that banking is not for everyone and you can usually mitigate not getting the return offer by providing references from people who've worked with you and expressing passion for the industry you're interviewing for.
Network, network, network for roles out of undergrad - shoot emails, get on phone calls, learn the industry so you can speak about it to a higher level. I'd even try to find people on LinkedIn who got Corp Strat roles straight out of undergrad and ask for their advice on how to break in, and see if they'd be willing to be a reference for you. Corp Strat jobs are difficult to get out of undergrad as usually the teams are small, no formalized recruiting cycle, and work flow requires that people hit the ground running so little formal training, but I think candidates who show they can move past those initial hurdles easily will be given a lot of leeway in the recruiting process when coming from undergrad.
Morgan Stanley's Firm Strategy & Execution group is their internal Corporate Strategy & Development team, and I'm fairly sure GS has it's own variant Firm Strategy Group. Capital One has their Strategy Associate program (link here, and AmEx has the Strategic Planning Group. Those are the only big Corp Strat teams I can think of that do formal recruiting off the top of my head with big teams... I'm sure there are more roles but these come on a more of an ad-hoc basis out of undergrad.
You want to be careful with some of the corporate strategy groups in certain industries. I know some of the investment bank strategy groups don't really have great hours from interviewing with them / having friends in them. I think as an undergrad you can't directly ask that, but when I was switching out of IB, I made it clear that I was switching for better work/balance in interviews (with the other reasons)
Had this happen to me too. Never thought I'd be "that kid" that didn't get the return offer, but it became super clear in the middle of the summer that one Associate didn't like me (and that tanked everything). Just a PSA for any incoming intern: every summer, interns don't get return offers, and none of those kids think that it'll be them. The most important tip I'd provide is that even though it's soul-crushing to have your first set of co-workers reject you, there will invariably be a few who you got along with. Use these friendly co-workers as references for the other interviews you'll have full-time. Being able to rely on people from your "failed" internship to vouch for you will make you more confident in interviews. Be a friendly, hard-working intern, and even if you make mistakes (and don't end up with a full-time offer), your attitude will become your insurance policy when office politics go awry.
Why didn't he like you?
How did you react to the people who made fun of you but later asked for a reference? How did you feel emotionally?
As terrible as it sounds, I felt proud in a weird way that my gamble had paid off and was noticed for working out. Needless to say, I did not serve as a reference for them and if brought up during screening processes, I would ding them immediately.
Thanks for the great thread. I am a fellow IB SA No Offer from a top 15 University (Duke/Vanderbilt/Georgetown/Northwestern). I have always been incredibly interested in the entertainment industry both from on the creative and corp strategy side. I recently spent a year at a major talent agency, but realized that the skillset I was developing there was not very marketable, and felt it was important to develop stronger technicals.
I have since transitioned to REPE. Although it is a bit removed in terms of asset class, I am definitely getting strong technical skills, deal exposure and strategy work.
My question is -- do you think it is possible to synthesize my prior experience in entertainment with my current REPE and translate that to a corp strat role at a Media/entertainment company?
My guess is you worked at WME or CAA in one of their floater / assistant type programs before moving to REPE?
I'd be concerned a little bit about the optics of your resume - it's a little hard to spin a banking no-offer into taking a talent agency entry-level job given the lackluster pay and menial work of the latter unless you were really interested in the industry, especially when there are other entry-level entertainment jobs / pathways to the industry around. It'll be doubly hard if your banking no-offer was from a non-BB. Then, leaving the talent agency job after a year may definitely have been the right move financially and professionally, but moving to REPE may demonstrate a lack of commitment to the industry for some. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, but I believe for entertainment jobs it helps to project as if you're operating from a place of strength no matter what decision you make. You'll need to think about how you spin that story.
That said, anything is possible. At a fundamental level, you understand Excel modeling and financial concepts, and on another level, you understand the entertainment industry from a talent perspective. It purely depends on how well you understand the industry and if you can convert your networking calls into meaningful references. I know that if I were contacted by someone who is clearly educated / smart but sucked up trying to make it through the talent agency suckhole, I'd admire his / her guts. This is an industry that generally looks favorably on Hollywood-esque 'pull myself up by my bootstraps' type people, so I'd just network and learn as much about the industry from a strategy perspective as possible. Also, don't feel like you have to start off big - working for a smaller studio can be just as meaningful experience as working for Disney, and all you need is a start.
Nobis sit odit eos mollitia. Consequatur praesentium odio nemo adipisci harum. Modi iure sint suscipit qui voluptatum est illo. Ex minima placeat cum repellat. Id consequatur et vitae quia. Voluptates dolorem ullam sed voluptatem qui praesentium itaque incidunt.
Exercitationem similique explicabo voluptas delectus assumenda illum. Eligendi quo sunt expedita. Voluptatem autem necessitatibus placeat et. Laudantium repellendus ea possimus placeat sit. Est et vitae illum accusantium dolorum. Quod sed asperiores et. Consectetur soluta veniam omnis ut.
Numquam voluptate ipsum molestiae. Nemo aliquam atque aliquam quo. Distinctio ad adipisci eaque voluptatem corrupti laudantium. Suscipit labore non ab suscipit.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Corporis reiciendis quod soluta sequi quo. Esse dolor quia blanditiis ratione. Ut nostrum nihil minima in aut rerum odio doloribus. Quis minima sed sint sint tenetur necessitatibus quia numquam. Fugiat iusto corporis sed modi laborum.
Molestiae quia enim nesciunt debitis cum in. Est reprehenderit consectetur illo consequatur nihil id. Ad debitis voluptates aut sed. Dolorem sequi incidunt facilis asperiores asperiores nisi saepe accusamus. Laboriosam vel ipsam qui tempora cum sunt.
Repellendus quia minima labore deleniti praesentium aperiam. Aut voluptas repellendus aspernatur accusantium laboriosam quaerat quia in.
Consectetur cumque assumenda magni aut dolore nemo sed quis. Veniam quam et doloremque vel. Natus enim repudiandae aspernatur saepe qui. Et quis et et cupiditate perferendis unde illum autem.