Trying to figure out what I'm doing, could use some career direction!

I’m going to make this as short as possible. Please be brutally honest I need some to decide on a career direction. Excuse any unnecessary info.


23 y/o male graduated with a Graphic Information Technology (GIT) degree from Arizona State University in May 2021. GIT combines advertising, marketing, UI/UX, business, and commercial video/photo. It’s actually an engineering degree from the ASU engineering school for what that’s worth. Also have a business minor and certificate in trading, markets, and investments from ASU. Excluding this summer I spent the past 4 years working a handful of internships in the sports media space. I have created social media content for the NFL, NBA, MLB, specific teams, entertainment networks, etc. Worked NBA Draft, MLS All Star game, other events. But I essentially topped out, and definitely burnt out. Need a change, needed to be challenged; didn’t want to be sitting courtside taking photos for the Phoenix Suns wearing kneepads at 60 y/o.


Last winter I got into the Boston College MSF program. Got most of it paid for and I got a part-time job with the Celtics so I moved to Boston. Started the program 2 weeks ago, I graduate in August 2022. Spent this summer as an Investment Banking Intern at a sell-side boutique M&A advisory firm, single-digit number of employees. Two main responsibilities were facilitating buyer and client communication, and building spreadsheets with client financials. Simultaneously I was working as a 1099 consultant at a real estate franchise advising on business development and some financial strategy.


Now I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I graduate. I’ve been applying to all sorts of random IB/PE/Banking analyst positions. Not really sure how I’m going to compete for IB analyst position at big firms where there are top-tier target school kids with 3-4 relevant IB internships. 


I don’t have a ton of technical financial skills at the moment (so not really sure how I'm going to accomplish IB tech interviews, at least with my current skillset). That’s my biggest weakness. However, I'm doing well in class and we are already diving in pretty deep so I’m thinking my technical skills will improve. My biggest strength is that I’m crazy good at problem-solving and have excellent communication skills. I basically human engineer my way into all my internships. I got this one this summer with basically zero financial skills or experience and used face time during interviews to convince the recruiter to hire me. Spent a lot of nights watching a zillion youtube videos to learn whatever skills I was lacking to complete projects at work. I think they were very satisfied with my performance at the conclusion of the internship. I’m also very used to working insane hours and manage time very well. The time commitment from my sports media jobs is very similar to IB. I was clocked in for 22 hours straight once. And I easily have worked multiple 100 hour weeks. Also, I'm generally good at quantitative reasoning and was always ahead in math classes in school.


What kind of jobs should I be looking for? Is there something more obtainable than IB that makes sense coming out of an MSF? I'm just trying to figure out what sector of finance I might want to work in and what is achievable with my experience? Everyone in my classes is shooting for IB so I don't have a lot of exposure to other sectors. Really just any advice would be appreciated. Random side note but I've been targeting jobs in Europe to the best of my ability. Thanks, everyone!!

 

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