Recent Graduate in Business Administration, best advice to get a finance job

Hello,

This is my first post here and I was curious to gain advice from others here at WSO.
I understand it is the holidays time, so responses may take time to come.

I am a recent undergraduate in Business Administration with a few finance projects and courses, where I gained technical analysis and project management experience. I am having trouble finding a job in the finance industry. I have applied for several financial analyst, business analyst, insurance underwriter, mortgage advisor, and financial advisor positions in big banks, and as well as commercial banking positions. So far in my 7 months of job searching I have received a few interviews at banks, but I have not received the position since I lack real-world experience. These interviews I received was mostly from my network connections. Most of my summer jobs were in automotive sales industry and I did quite well for the small period of time, but I do not want to go in that industry. I have seen insurance and mortgage jobs that are easy to get in, but they are with only commission. I am only looking for base or base+commission roles.

The only real-industry experience I have, is that I own a e-commerce high-end luxury fashion brand in the US for about 2 years from zero to ground up. In this business, I learned product development from design to physical product release phase, bookkeeping, hiring/recruiting top talent, and strategic market research in order to find new clients.

That being said, since I am having trouble looking for a job in corporate finance, commercial lending, and trading sector of finance, what type of positions should I apply for or what can I do to get in the trading sector of finance (even though I know this is very hard with no prior real financial experience)?

My ultimate goal is to be a hedge fund manager or work as a private client wealth manager.

I was interested in the Mortgage Lending part of finance and Commercial Insurance Underwriter type jobs, but I am not sure where I can apply with my current experience? Are these type of industries in demand right now or later in the future?

I know my question may sound like less experience in the financial industry, but does cold-calling work for these type of jobs? How does one cold call for a job in banks or wealth management firms? Does cold-messaging recruiters thru LinkedIn work?

I did cold-calling in order to get my previous car sales jobs.

 
Best Response

What are we working with here? GPA? Good school?

You should be spending most of your day job searching at this point. You need something soon. Send applications to FT positions while trying to find a paid/unpaid internship to get some experience going before you get a large gap on your resume. Also, check out headhunters and temp agencies.

Go on Indeed and apply to every f'ing job. You'll start to get interviews - it might be 1 out of 100, so just apply to at least 1000. Set up each application as a row on Excel so that when the firm calls, you can look at your spreadsheet and know exactly the position as well as other pertinent information such as stated salary and requested salary. Without a spreadsheet, when you have calls coming for multiple positions from locations all over the country, it gets confusing real quick.

Also, make sure you're keeping yourself in good shape during this process. You need lots of endorphins and positive chemicals in your mind as this is a period of uncertainty. Nutrition and fitness will enable you to crush it every day in your applications and when you interview, positive energy and enthusiasm will not only be natural, it will be overflowing. Your stress and anxiety will be lower, creating an overall good first impression for the people you meet.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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