New here, gave a couple questions

New here. I currently work construction and hate it. Traveling all over the US and doing grunt work. I have a degree in Psychology which doesn't say much but also am beginning my MBA this Fall with an emphasis in Finance. Long story short, number crunching, trends, investments, stocks etc interest me greatly and I could see my self enjoying a career in finance. I think that given years experience and more knowledge I could make a good financial professional who actually enjoys his work. As it is right now I dread every day but only stay because otherwise I would be a broke bum. 25 y/o male 2 years out of school

 

Any advice on where to start would be greatly appreciated. Don't mind being a "grunt" in the bank or at insurance office for awhile as long as I am working toward an attainable goal. Thanks

 

Where are you getting your MBA from? why didn't you go with a master's? do you know what to expect from your future program? what makes you believe that you'll enjoy working in finance? maybe you're just satisfied with just working in an office environment since it's not physical work like in construction. You should ask yourself in which domain of the finance industry you'd like to work in.I presume you'd like to work at a bank.Commercial or investment bank? I'd personally recommend going for consulting since you have experience in the construction industry and it would help immensely if you're going to be a future consultant.

I recommend using the search bar of this forum,it's really useful.

 

Construction never really interested me. It was just an open position that required a lot of "neck down" or demo and labor work. I would be interested in consulting and advising options as I have a undergrad in Psychology, if that makes any difference. More so I wanted to know if I really needed an undergrad in finance or just needed work experience and to obtain certifications, etc in the particular field which I may apply for (say financial analyst), that has intrigued me.

I strongly dislike being tied to a desk all day and would rather be meeting with and discussing financial options etc with clients, if that helps with narrowing down more what id like to do. Don't be too hard on the newbie. Still "green" to the field of finance.

 

you need to have informational interviews with everyone in finance you can talk to (start w/friends & family). ask them what they do every day, what their responsibilities are, what they love about it, what they hate about it, and then you'll figure out the next step. right now, it sounds like you just hate where you are and think that finance will be better but don't know what "finance" really is. soul search time, and leverage your bschool

 
Best Response

Take a step back and figure out what your end goal is. Finance, in its broader definition, is a pretty large and encompassing field, it's not simply crunching numbers and picking stocks. There's corporate finance inside a company, all sorts of Asset Management (from etf's to mutual funds to hedge funds and I suppose formally private equity would be asset management although I'd almost throw it into a subset of IB), private wealth management, investment banking, equity research, sales & trading, and probably a few dozen areas I'm skimming over, and each of these areas has numerous functional areas and roles within them. There is tons of helpful data on this site and others that will at least give brief descriptions of each area and some will go pretty in depth. I'd look at that first.

Then be honest and look at where your bschool places in the job market. For example, you may really want a post MBA associate position at Goldman but that's going to be hard/impossible to land from a bschool that's not top ranked. You can try and there are dozens of posts on here about that, but you'd largely be spinning your wheels (I don't know the exact cut off's but you might be able to get into a BB IB and not have to be in an M7 school and it would be possible from a top 20/25, but you'd have an infinitely harder time landing from 50-75 school). Figure out what type of companies do on campus recruiting and where other alums have placed. See what type of summer internships you can get through school.

A lot of it depends on geography also. If you're not at a top bschool people tend to place more locally (as opposed to, for example and to take the extreme, Harvard or Stanford where you can write your ticket from Boston to Shanghai if you want), so keep that in mind as well.

Would you consider staying in the construction industry. You didn't say what you have been doing in construction (are you swinging a hammer or in a slightly more management role?) but if you know the nuts and bolts of construction you may be able to get back in post MBA at the management/finance level, and as you know construction firms range from extremely small to massive multinationals so you could see where you best fit.

 

You don't need to have a finance undergrad,if you would have lurked the forum you would see there are plenty of users who don't have an undergraduate degree in finance.

I suggest looking at the FAQs tab as it contains a lot of useful information, as for the career options you might like to become a financial adviser,consultant or work in the S&T division of a bank.

Also financial analysts don't deal with clients.

You need to provide more information regarding your educational background,extracurricular activities etc.The more the better.

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