Most Unlikely Transition to Finance You've Seen

Looking for some general encouragement and interesting stories. What has been the most interesting/unusual background you have ever seen transition into finance?

Ill start: Back ~5 years ago or so I had a friend starting FT at a BB and he had somebody join his group (with no prior finance internships) who was a professional classical musician that had completed some sort of finance/modeling bootcamp a few months prior then got a spot somebody dropped last minute before starting. Didn't even go to training just started working.

He ended up quitting literally his first or second week.

 

That honestly is not encouraging. I am in a similar situation:

  • Top 10 bank of my country
  • was hired about a year ago for a 100% back office regulatory position with zero finance activities
  • was really lucky & happy to intern for literally a day in capital markets last week
  • meet head of dcm...he is looking for staff
  • next day had an informal interview
  • wrote my application a day later

It's not that I do already have the job, but there is a real chance. Thing is, I don't know shit. Not literally zero, but very close to it. I do hold a PhD in philosophy. I so want this to work out and I am motivated to the moon and back, but I am scared...man am I scared...

Thoughts?

 

If you're going for entry level, your network and attitude matter more than skills IMO. Obviously if you move on to the formal process, you will need to prep hard, just like any other candidate. However, your foot is already in the door. I had to prep hard to make my transfer from BO to FO, but I managed to do it within a competitive BB. I beat out other IB and CB kids who were already working internally as well because I prepped harder and wanted the job more than they did (so said the people who hired me). Be confident in yourself and make it happen. The opportunities to make such a move do not come often.

 

Film student undergrad - total NON target school - ZERO recruiting - think a cooper union type of school- to BB S&T with a pit stop in ibanking. Nuff said. :) :)

********"Babies don't cost money, they MAKE money." - Jerri Blank********
 

I was working during college at an event planner who renting a small office space (really, a room) from an investment bank that had the whole floor. I don't know why that was, in retrospect, but as a result got to know the guys there, then started doing some work on the side and once I graduated they just hired me full time. Easiest desk move ever. From there was able to move ahead.

********"Babies don't cost money, they MAKE money." - Jerri Blank********
 

If you get into a BB and actually hustle, it's possible to move around. However, it takes being aggressive and building strong relationships with people who will vouch for you. I did the worst ops internship you can possibly imagine (didn't know much ab the industry coming from a NT state school). From there, I said there's no fkn way I'm starting there after graduation so I managed to get a transfer into risk. After 11 months in risk ,was able to network my way into CB. From here, I plan to make the jump to IB. All in all, I will be 2 years behind my peers but isn't bad for coming from straight mind-numbing ops and considering a career of ~40 years. Can make it happen with confidence and the right attitude.

 

Best of luck on your endeavors my man. Just curious as I have a similar story, but mentally, how do you handle being 2 years behind your peers. Perhaps this is a weakness of mine, perhaps it will end up being a strength, but for me I can't help but feel a tremendous sense of panic and knowing that some of my peers that I was sitting next to in class in college are moving ahead much faster than I am. Call it hubris or excess pride, but I am having a lot of trouble with it lately as a result of career maneuvering to get from back office gig to a coveted front office role.

We're not lawyers. We're investment bankers. We didn't go to Harvard. We Went to Wharton!
 
Best Response

Care less about what other people think.

I get that that sounds trite, but there's a very powerful mindset to adopt. We are all nothing other than a collection of atoms hurtling through space. Someone else's opinion of you is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Sure, if that someone is your significant other, boss, or b-school recommender, they are in a position of influence over you, but that's only as long as you choose to continue caring about the thing they can offer you.

When you decide that sex from your girlfriend is no longer a thing too precious to lose, her opinion of you loses any power over you. When you decide that a promotion or even a paycheck from your boss is no longer a make-or-break in your life, their ability to fire you or shitcan you in your year-end review is immaterial to you. When you decide that business school is a $200k sticker cost / $700k total (including opportunity) cost and not a thing you want to pursue any more, your recommender's ability to deliver a strong letter is simply irrelevant in your life.

Continue in that mindset, and it becomes clear that when you decide Jim, Mark, Todd, and Mike from school who all got EB or BB banking roles right out of school and exited to MF PE two years later are guys who you don't care about because you are the one who has to be proud of you, it doesn't matter whether they think they're moving faster than you or not.

Besides, chances are, they're not thinking of you as much as you think they are. Everyone is wrapped up in their own world; each of your peers has their own family, girlfriend, health, or job drama. You aren't in a starring role in the movie playing in their mind.

You're only in a competition with yourself. It's not about how you're doing relative to the guy you graduated with. Be better than you were yesterday. That's what matters.

If four years after college you can look back and reflect on how hard you've worked to progress from two years of hell in an ops role to two years in purgatory in credit risk to (finally) a front office banking job, congrats: you won. You did the thing you wanted to. Whether you got it at 22 or 26 is irrelevant. Plus, once you apply duration, it all smooths out. Your career trajectory over the four decades you'll work is going to have no statistical variation from the guy who started in the role it took you some years to get into. Arguably, the fact that you worked that hard and maintained that level of discipline probably positions you for better future success: you know what the grind tastes like, and you're not scared to bear down.

Yeah, it's unnecessary pride. It's also toxic, so cut it out from your spirit and recognize how much of a gift life itself is and all the opportunities it contains.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 

Totally agree with apae. What is so bad about getting in ib later? At the end of the day you're still 24ish with 40-50+years of work ahead. I think people on this site are too damn linear and think you have to be in ib->PE->hbs etc when a decent amount of people in the US would kill for even a 60k job. Obviously ops is kinda boring but there is a boring factor in almost any job unless you are absolutely addicted to your field. I think most AM/ER people love the work.

 

Piece of advice: you have to talk to your current supervisor and get them on board, and you need to be really cognizant that the work you do right now matters a lot. I say this primarily because we get a lot of corporate bankers trying to network their way into IB and my MD always calls their current boss before even taking a coffee or 15 minute call. But good luck, it happens all the time and some of the PWM/CB transfers are the hardest working kids and make great investment bankers.

 

Yeah, lucky for me I have great relationships with my managers. Additionally, to your point, it's mostly because they know my work quality and this makes them want to help me get where I want to go. Without that factor, the transfer would be very difficult IMO. Have to make sure to take pride in whatever work you're doing, even if you eventually want to move elsewhere.

 

I graduated with Actuarial Science degree and eventually got a temp job as a Corporate Actions Analyst. As much as the money wasn’t ideal, I needed relevant experience on my resume so sucked it up and toughed it out for 6 months. Then moved onto a Portiflio accounting position for a year then a Real Estate accounting position for the past year. I more than doubled my salary after so many people told me you’re lucky to make what you’re making. I set out to prove them wrong and said nobody can tell me what I’m worth. I learned so much about myself and found it easier to figure out what I don’t want to do, where I don’t want to work and who I don’t want to work with. That helped narrow down what I want to do which is get MSF/MBA and move into PE/HF or start my own business. Honestly it’s really what you make of it. Ive met so many people and networked by just talking to people. It’s amazing who the people close to you know. A huge motivation was Gary Vaynerchuk. His videos helped motivate me to further myself. Two things that really stuck was “why work 9-5 for someone else then come home and do nothing to better yourself?” and “Get yourself happy, then everything else clicks”. From that point, I literally went home and grinded every night by working on resume, networking, job researching... Honestly, I was just focused on the money and have been burning out every 12 months or so. Just do what makes you happy and the money will follow

 

Hey I am in totally similar position, although I have not entered medical school yet. I was wondering what made you realize that medicine was not for you? I would really appreciate any advice.

 

go back to medical school. Even if u grad with a 2.0 you'll still likely get matched to something with better life opportunities and prestige than a middle or back office BB job. But if you don't wanna do that, given that banks avoid analysts over 22 for IBD and a little older for MBAs (they can tell your age by college grad dates and looks), get a financial engineering degree. Its one of the few hard skills thats has a favorable S/D picture, and the schools (yours included) list the pictures and resumes of the MFE students on their websites. The quant side of the industry actually does excuse age.

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