WSO Podcast | E208: Escaping to Larger Financial Hubs | Weekly Intern Meetup #8

Another fun chat with the WSO interns.

Or Listen to the Podcast Here:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify  
Stitcher 

Resources:

WSO Courses

WSO Resume Review

WSO Mentors

 

WSO Podcast Episode 208 Transcript:

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief Monkey. And this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. Another fun chat with the interns this week. We cover everything from how to escape to larger financial hubs to give yourself more opportunity. If you're coming from a country that doesn't have a financial hub or a much smaller number of job opportunities available for you. We cover also what to do on social media to make sure that you're putting your best foot forward and more specifically, how to present yourself on LinkedIn. Enjoy. So welcome, everybody. I think we've got about 15 joining. We still have a few more people joining right now, but we can get started. Yeah. So Nabil and or anybody have any questions for Nabil or myself for the internship itself? We are going to have some changes coming.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:07] Soon.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:08] In terms of time tracking and all this stuff, probably the next week or two. So keep an eye out for that. We'll send an email, but we'll also. We'll also kind of obviously send it all through Slack and update all the guys and stuff, But it's going to allow us to we're going to use a different system outside of Hubstaff because with the team growing so much, it's going to allow us to do it in a way that won't bankrupt the company. Brandon. Brandon, you have a question? Go for it.

Intern 1: [00:01:41] Yeah. Yeah. So somewhere down the line, like once, because obviously I'm saying that we're picking up a lot of traffic. Will we be able to see or contact you guys to figure out how much traffic our individual articles are? Because there's a few of them I'm pretty proud of that I'll be writing about or that I've already written about. So I'm just curious how well they're doing.

Intern 1:  [00:01:58] Or I will be curious.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:59] Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think currently we probably have about. Wouldn't it be a 500 ish articles written in that section around there?

Nabil: [00:02:11] Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:13] Yeah. So. Any one article. Even if you do an incredible job, it may not like be that impressive of traffic because a lot of it will depend on how many links it gets. So it's not just about how good the article is, it's also about how it's structured within the site, and it's also about how many links, external links are pointing to it. So that's something that we're working on. We have a whole other team helping us do that in terms of trying to get links and stuff like that. So yeah, where we're happy to give you those numbers if you like them. Down the road, I suspect as things go on and that entire section gets more traffic, that it'll become more and more impressive. We have a question here in the chat from H. It says, Hello, Patrick. I have completed more than 25 hours in my internship and was deciding which course should I take. So instead, instead of taking courses after completing every 24 hours, can I directly take the elite money package after completing 150 hours? So the elite modelling package is made up of six courses so you can choose, you can start getting access to individual courses within there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:24] I suggest Excel modeling to start, unless you've taken a lot of Excel and done that, I would say it's a really good foundational course to start with, or something like financial statement modeling before moving on to more advanced courses like mergers and acquisitions and LBO modelling. So if you do those first, you're going to be kind of you'll get them and you'll understand them, but it's going to be harder to actually build alongside the instructor and do it in such a way that is efficient. Which is I know I can take these courses individually, but then I will not get the bonuses attached with the package. We're happy to give you the bonuses attached to the package. Once you get to those six courses, you can start. We don't want to slow you down in your learning, so feel free to. Asked for access to some of the individual portions within the package. When you get once you get to six, you get the six who are happy to open up the bonuses.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:13] As well for you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:04:15] Yeah, no problem. Um. Olmert has his hand up. Go for.

Intern 2: [00:04:23] It. I have so many questions. Just let me start from the internship.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:29] Fire away. Fire away is.

Intern 2: [00:04:30] What? The tour, by the way. I will remember you send me the message about the rising position. Like Chief Ed intern. Yeah. And should I change correct my previous articles with the status awaiting corrections by myself? Or should I do this?

Nabil: [00:04:52] Someone else has to look at it. I would just defeat the purpose of review. Right.

Intern 2: [00:04:56] Okay. I just thought with a more more senior role, I should do it myself. Like.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:03] Now we always want a second set of eyes. All the articles, even if you're an editor for other articles.

Intern 2: [00:05:10] Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And the next question is from the courses I just asked a few a couple of courses, and I see my reward as a 50% discount for mentoring. And I have two. Yeah, I have two bonuses, 50% each. And if I combine both of them, would I get 100% discount?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:33] Unfortunately, not just because. Because the mentorship is pretty expensive for us to run. So we're not making any. With that bonus we don't make, we actually lose money on that bonus already, even at the 50%.

Intern 2: [00:05:45] Okay. Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:46] So like, yeah, if we just did it for free, it would. It would be very expensive if we did.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:52] Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:52] We already lose a little bit of money doing that big discount. We do it for people who get through the course and want to try out the mentor program. But we understand if it's too expensive, even with the 50% off, it's not a cheap option. It's a 1 to 1 scenario where you're getting like 1 to 1 coaching. And so we I usually suggest using the mentor program once you like, have interviews, like a mock interview, you have like a big interview coming up and you want it like a realistic mock interview practice, then it's really worth the money if you're just like exploring and trying to figure things out, Where should I go in my career? What should I do? This? Yes, it's great to have that mentor, but that's a pretty expensive service to use for like when you don't even know what you want. You can use the forums for free and like learn a lot just by reading and asking questions in there. You don't need to go hire somebody for whatever it is 100 $100 USD an hour to do that. It's helpful. It's helpful. But, you know, if if, if you don't have a lot of money, you can get a lot of a lot of the same advice for free from from very experienced actual professionals in the forums. And by the way, it doesn't mean you have to believe everybody in the forums, but people who have a gold star or the gold around their avatar. So the.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:07] Gold star, the counselor, you're.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:08] Certified. Yeah. So usually you can trust them, you can see, you can look at their user profile, see what they've been writing, see how many silver bananas they have, see if they're like they give good advice or if it's if they're more. If they're more like a people disagree with them, they're not giving great advice. So you get a sense if you can just look at that and ask the questions there.

Intern 2: [00:07:30] Okay. And the next questions are career related, especially growth LinkedIn. So I searched about the LinkedIn summary, how to write it in the forums, but I didn't find it. And so what? What would you recommend? How should I write the summary? Would it should it be too short or more detailed?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:53] I'm not sure I felt in summary. Can you explain?

Intern 2: [00:07:55] Linkedin Summary section? Yeah. Should it be in.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:58] You're in your actual LinkedIn like you're describing like who you are and stuff like that?

Intern 2: [00:08:04] Yeah. Should it be more brief?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:05] Like this is even more brief. Yeah. I don't. Don't do this. Don't say don't start referring to yourself in the third person and over embellishing their. Don't be like, oh oh is they aspiring finance professional and did it like better just like leave it blank or and let your experience speak for itself and be more detailed around the type of work you're doing and just showcase your work so differently.

Intern 2: [00:08:31] You think?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:32] Yeah, I would leave it blank. And if you do have something, you can say something like, you know, student at XYZ finance majors at XYZ University searching for a role in investment banking or whatever it is. You could say something like that. The thing I don't like about that is then if you have that on your resume and you apply to like a corporate finance position and then somebody looks, they're like, Oh, he only wants investment banking or and you get rejected, you could forget that that's there. So I rather keep it more broad and just give people kind of a general overview of looking for to start a career in finance, something like that. If you do want to put something there.

Intern 2: [00:09:10] Okay. Thank you. And the last question is about especially how to break into finance. I'm interested in the especially in finance career in the United States. So is it realistic to break into the United States any kind of finance role like equity research trading or even corporate finance? Let me tell you briefly my background.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:36] Yeah, Yeah.

Intern 2: [00:09:38] Go ahead. I'm from Kazakhstan. I recently graduated Bachelor of Finance Program. I had an internship about portfolio management, and I want the second place in the CFO Institute Research Challenge. And what do you think with the with this internship, would I have more chance to break into any kind of finance role in the internship?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:01] Will help build your resume. Yes. And we'll get you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:03] More calls, I think.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:06] If you're in Kansas. Where are you located?

Intern 2: [00:10:09] In Kazakhstan, yeah. Because almighty, I.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:11] Think if you're there, it's going to be very hard because like, how are you going to interview?

Intern 2: [00:10:16] From there, it would be nearly impossible.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:19] Yeah, it's going to be very hard. So like, what I always say is, like, wherever you want to be, you kind of need to get there. And the hard part is it's more like a visa issue, right? So for we actually have and this is something we can actually make available to all the interns to be. I think there's a whole mini course on visas and international students coming trying to come to the US. We have a whole course in this. We should just release that for free to everybody because it's really relevant to a lot of the questions here. But that's going to be really your biggest uphill battle because if you had the visa, you had a sponsor from a from a company, then you're fine. But like most companies don't bother to do that. And the ones that do are really big and they have like these channels that they pull from at certain universities. Um, that may get set like someone like yourself who isn't in one of those traditional channels. It makes it super, super difficult.

Nabil: [00:11:11] Yeah. And each one has like, a like an insane lottery, right? Like, even if you get sponsored, like the lottery, you might not get to the best way to get to to a company which is based off in your country. That visa is much easier to get because they'll have quotas.

Intern 2: [00:11:26] So that's where you.

Nabil: [00:11:29] I didn't get you.

Intern 2: [00:11:30] Internal transfer, I mean.

Nabil: [00:11:32] Yeah, exactly.

Nabil: [00:11:33] Exactly. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:36] Exactly. Like. Like a TWC or KPMG. Let's say they have an office there. You get a transfer to London or to New York.

Intern 2: [00:11:43] For that of the branch of Citibank, but only working with the corporate finance, corporate banking and I guess the commercial banking. When will that department start?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:56] That's a start. But then you'd have to network internally to get transferred. And I'd try to get into a bigger market, like a London or somewhere. Somewhere where there's just there's more opportunity because it's not it's it's just crazy. How different in New York and London is to wherever even a smaller like a Brussels or a or even a Paris or a Toronto is tiny compared to New York and London in terms of financing opportunities. So if you can get into those right cities suddenly with some skills of networking, suddenly you're meeting people for coffee and suddenly you're going to be given a lot more opportunities. And then that's how you can get into the latter and that's how you land, that's how you get in. But until you're in that city, it's going to be almost on. Not impossible, but almost impossible. Just because all the visa issues.

Intern 2: [00:12:46] And one more question. So what do you think about the Master of Finance program?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:52] A good question. I was going to say be careful for the Master's of finance program because they're expensive. And for a lot of international students, they think they're going to come in. The Masters of Finance is going to get them the job in investment banking. And guess who gets most of the offers in investment banking and masters in finance programs? It's the kids who are already our resident or citizens in the US.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:15] So if you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:16] Do go do a masters in finance, make sure you do your research specifically on how the international students place. So some of them do get an offer, but it's incredibly competitive. But make sure you ask those questions. Don't ask what percentage of the class. Got jobs and investment banking or in corporate finance or in corporate development. Ask what percentage of the class that are outside the US don't have citizenship and end up getting a job in and were able to stay in the US, for example?

Intern 2: [00:13:48] I should focus on that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:50] You should focus on that. And don't let the numbers, the other numbers fake you out and make you spend 50,000 USD.

Intern 2: [00:13:59] Okay. Thank you very much, Patrick. Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:03] That's the that's the risk. I think the best bet for you is try to find like go to a Citibank, try to get an internal transfer network In turn, once you had an internal once you had that brand on your resume, you can start networking internally, though. You can't do it. You can't do it. But if you get on enough phone calls and you do enough video chats with people, you might be surprised that somebody might be like, God, man, this kid is just he's hungry. He wants to come find OC. He can do a rotation here in London and then boom, everything opens up to you. Once you're in the right city, everything opens up to you.

Intern 2: [00:14:34] Got you. Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:36] You're welcome. So, in other words, get out of get out of where you are. As fast as you can get, get the job that the company that has other branches, and then you'll have a better shot. Anybody. Okay. Here's some questions from Hong Mo. Lu Liu. On average, how many hours should one spend on one article? So currently we don't have any guidance on how long, how long each articles should take. We are going to change this soon in terms of having a certain minimum number of articles. We're not going to start we're going to stop tracking activity. We're going to move you guys all to a different tracker and instead just have a minimum article thing where it's like, I think three articles, minimum for every 25 hours. So you have like over 7 hours or sorry, over 8 hours for every single article, which we think is plenty, you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:24] Should be able to do.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:25] Them in two to 2 to 5. We're going to have a minimum there just to like if you're writing, you shouldn't be writing three or 4000 words should be writing probably somewhere between 2500 to 2500 words. And that for most terms is sufficient. So on average, I'd assume somewhere between five and eight. Should be plenty and that should be enough to do a great job in terms of how to how to access the free courses. Once you hit that, hit that threshold. Basically, all all you need to do is email ivy ivy at Wall Street, Oasis dot com and she'll check to make sure that you. So check to make sure that you have you've completed what you need to complete and should get you online access to the courses. Brendon asked, Is that including edits? What do you think? I think so. For three? Yeah, for 28 hours. I think that's including edits. Right?

Nabil: [00:16:20] Yeah. He's 25. Yeah. Including retire. Because writing takes like 4 to 6. And then edits generally wouldn't take that long. I mean, it wouldn't take four months.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:33] You're having to rewrite the whole article.

Nabil: [00:16:35] Yeah. In that case, yeah. That's like rewriting. So again, four, two, six plus five.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:44] Yeah, no. Good question, Brandon. Samir Yeah. You have your hand up. I think you're muted, though.

Intern 3: [00:16:52] Hi.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:53] Hi. How are you?

Intern 3: [00:16:55] Yeah, I'm good. So, yeah, I'm very new. Is going to be a first week. I'm going to start from Monday. So I just wanted to ask, how do we pick our topic and how do they actually proceed. Start writing the. Yeah. So what's the first step we should take?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:10] Great question. Yeah. So I think if you go into the Slack group, there's how to get started in the guide and there's step, step by step. So we say watch this video and we'll actually show you an example of how to select your topic and do all this. So just follow those instructions step by step and your self selecting these articles. So it's Nabil, we'll put you on it will tell you, hey, pick from this, pick from this specific tab within the sheet and you can you can look at all the different topics that are there. Now. What I've said to other interns in the past is you should be picking something that. Interest you. So if you're like a CPA and you want to have an accounting background, you should probably be picking accounting terms. If you're want to go into investment banking, you should probably do something relevant to that. So like valuation questions or financial modeling questions or excel based questions there terms and kind of go that way. So I think it just depends on what you're targeting. I'd say most of this stuff is. Most of it's relevant to finance careers, so almost all of it's relevant. So even if you choose economics terms and stuff like that, it's good to know those and be well versed in it.

Intern 3: [00:18:17] Yeah, totally. And I started a very you know, because the finance world is like this is so large and, you know, as students, we haven't had that kind of exposure yet. So how do we go about, you know, knowing what we're interested in? That's why reading an article, just reading the job description, because it's tough to figure out whether we like this as a career option or not.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:41] You're saying, how do we know as students kind of what our like what's what's a realistic or What's a big career for us?

Intern 3: [00:18:46]  Yeah, because this day, reading an article on what investment banking is, I don't exactly get how my life they look ten years down the line. So how do we just go about picking what excites us? It's tough to figure that out.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:02] Really hard. And it's unfortunate that recruiting has gotten so accelerated that they expect you to know that when you're like 19 years old.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:10] You have to pretend like you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:12] You came out of the womb reading the Wall Street Journal, and.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:17] Then you're.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:17] All excited for investment banking when you can barely understand what it is and you've never even done it. It's kind of silly. I think it's hard. I think I would I would encourage you to read all the free material that's out there, not just the resource sections, but read the forums, because there's a lot of really honest advice there and it's not sugarcoated. So I'll say from my personal experience in investment banking opens a ton of doors, but it is a huge sacrifice in terms of hours and life. And relationships. So I was working for two two years at Rothschild in Restructuring Group. Not not exaggerating 90 ish hours a week. So that means sleeping at your desk. That means sleeping with a pill, having a pillow at your desk, sleeping under the desk when needed. Getting edits at 3 a.m. for 4 a.m. in the morning. And while things have improved slightly in investment banking, this is it's it's pretty cultural. It's this is not something that's unique just to to Rothschild or to other banks. It's pretty much universal like that. So. You think really hard because people see the money and they say, Oh, I definitely want this.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:27] I don't care. But it's one thing to hear and think about like a 60 or 70 hour week. It's very different from an 82 or 90 hour week or even 100 hours a week. Very different because the marginal cost of each incremental hour. That is that you're giving to your employer goes up and up and up and up because it soon starts eating into everything. It starts eating into your ability to do laundry. It starts eating your ability to go to sleep and get that extra hour of sleep, your ability to go to the gym, your ability to even have a phone call with your parents or have a relationship. And so people don't understand that it's not a linear cost curve. The marginal cost of each addition. So it's a very 70 hours a week is very different from 80, which is very different from 90. Right. And so I think it's important that if you want to do investment banking, a good way to get a taste of it is try working really a 70 hour a week somewhere. And see how that feels.

Intern 3: [00:21:22] Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:24] And if you do that 70 hours, you're like, Man, I'm exhausted. That's so hard. Now try adding 20 hours to that. And are you going to able to do that for two years? Right. And a lot of people can. And a lot of people can. A lot of people leave for that exact reason. But in terms of is the work interesting or not? I think I think it is interesting work. I think you learn a lot, especially if you're kind of numbers oriented. You like understanding about business and finance and acquisitions and how how businesses allocate capital and how they make money. And if you're interested in that, that's awesome. That's going to help help you kind of get through those those long hours. And for sure, if you do the 1 to 2 years of.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:07] Banking.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:08] You are sought after, I can't tell you the amount of demand for people who've come through banking. So that means not just for private equity, but for everything that means for for the banks are so desperate for talent because for experienced talent, they don't know. They don't want to hire people who are more analysts because it's hard because you got to train them and they're pretty. I myself was pretty useless for at least six months. But a lot of people are useless coming out of undergrad. Our Antigone. So I think it's tough. I think what you want to do is try to get a real sense of what the day to day is like. So talk to that's why the networking calls are so important early on. It's it's not just the bullshit networking call to try and try and make the connection where you're not providing a value. You're actually be genuinely interested in what people are doing and ask questions like. Freshman, Sophomore year. That's when you can ask a lot of dumb questions. That's when you should like obviously not stuff you can Google but like ask questions about like OC and so what is this like? If you can develop a real relationship, a real friendship with people who are already there, maybe, maybe an alum that can give you like the the non BS answer and give you give it to you straight about what it's really like. That's the best source of information and that's going to give you a much better sense of like, is this something you really want to commit to? Because it starts it starts way before you even graduate just to land that internship. You're going to put in a lot of legwork while doing your classes.

Intern 3: [00:23:32] Right. And you know, before myself, I think you also stated going where you want to work. So in that regard, do you think it's worth pursuing something like an MBA just because it's easier to get the visa? If I'm in India and I want to work in the US, is it easier to do an MBA in a US university and then I can the state or do you think I should just go right out of undergrad?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:58] I think it's hard either way. So I think you should be trying. If you know that's the direction you want to go, you should try right at undergrad. Um. Because. Well. The NBA. Let me just say, yes, the NBA is great because I think there is more of a get into that channel where you're in the right. If you get to the right NBA, like let's say a top ten, top 15 NBA in the US, they're just huge feeders into the management consulting firms, into the investment banks. And so it's much easier to get into those channels and tapped in. But even getting into one of those top MBAs is not like a foregone conclusion, especially if you're coming from India and you're competing against all all your Indian brothers right.

Intern 3: [00:24:38] Here, too.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:40] You're going to have to score real high on that, that section. Just saying. You got a lot of real bright people. So, like, it's not going to be an easy slog. So what I would say, if you know where you want to go, you should be trying to get there without spending them 100 plus thousand if you can get there without it. A lot of places now don't even care about the NBA. They want to just promote within. They don't want to lose you. You know.

Intern 3: [00:25:08] Right. Right. And just one final really stupid question, but just in interpretation, do we get some sort of certificate at the end this so that we can show it on our resume? It.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:20] Yeah, absolutely. Are we doing, like any official strategy or how we how are we doing it?

Nabil: [00:25:24] Oh, yeah. We will be doing like official certificate, right? If someone wants to be agree that we'd give it to them. Yeah. Yeah. So just let me know whenever you're done, I can be cautious.

Intern 3: [00:25:35] Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:37] Yeah.

Intern 3: [00:25:37] Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:38] Yeah. And I. I'd also suggest you look in the Slack group. There's an example of how to put it on your CV.

Intern 3: [00:25:45] Yeah, I did take that. Yeah, that was great. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:48] Great.

Intern 3: [00:25:48] Perfect to speak to you next week.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:52] Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks for joining. Welcome. And thanks for joining. And let's see, Brendon says I hear some analysts at certain pension funds work reasonable hours. Yes, it's true. Bhuvan asks for a career in investment banking. Would you suggest doing a CFA or MBA finance or even both? Cfa typically is not very helpful in getting an investment banking role. They don't really. Cfa is more for market oriented roles, so probably more helpful for like an equity research role. So I think the hard part is investment banking. And at an investment bank there's the umbrella of everything, including equity research, all this stuff just to back up even asset management. So when I say investment banking, I mean front office investment banking advisory, so like restructuring, M&A, all that stuff. So for those front office roles where your revenue generating, you're selling your advisory services. Cfa is not helpful or minimally helpful if if you're talking about like equity research, asset management, hedge funds. So pension funds, long only long term CFA is helpful. And I think it's it's something that is respected if you do it. So of course there now are like what, hundreds of thousands of CFA every year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:10] What is it?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:12] It's a crazy.

Nabil: [00:27:12] Nutshell.

Nabil: [00:27:13] But yeah, it should be, it should be high enough, high and.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:16] Hopefully doesn't get too diluted. But you get the idea. Yeah. Let's see. Any other. Questions?

Intern 4: [00:27:24]  I have two more questions. Shoot. So about again, about the Masters in Finance program. If it's not the Target school, but the employment is quite good for foreigners, is it worth it?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:41] I don't know how the employment would be very good. If it's not a target school, that's a it's impossible. It'd be very weird.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:51] Or I wouldn't believe them.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:55] But yeah, there's there's. If you do some searches on matches in finance programs and placement stats and you can ask them directly, you're not going to they may say, oh we don't keep track of that or whatever. But I mean you could also look for people who have master's in finance from those specific schools and just try to touch base with them on like then send them a message, Hey, I'm considering this master's and finance program. I see that you are from outside the US. Where were you able to get. And they may say, Stay away. Like I was the only one who landed a job. Or they might say, Actually, half of us were able to stay. So that's where the networking and just talking to people who've been in the shoes that you want to go, that's where it's super helpful because you're getting more up to date real advice, even more than the forums, even more than me, who's I'm biased by my own path. Nabil is biased by his path. Everybody's biased by their own path. So just talking to enough people to get a real kind of up to date view is important. So that's your your most important skill is going to be actually being willing to get on the phone and talk with people and explain your situation.

Intern 4: [00:29:03] Okay. And the last question is about Kaya certification. It's the charter alternative investment analyst. Would it be helpful for career in private equity and venture capital? What do you think about it? Or is it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:19] Csi or whatever it is? Cia?

Intern 4: [00:29:23] Yeah. Alternative investment analyst.

Nabil: [00:29:26] Yeah, I have. I've done that. Not really, because it's alternative investment. So it would be more like commodities, cryptos, digital painting and all that stuff like not not traditional, like equity that. So yeah, I don't think it's that how.

Nabil: [00:29:41] Some private equity.

Nabil: [00:29:45] Funds do depends on what they trade on. Like do you have someone doing commodities or like what kind of hedge fund is it? Is it traditional equity, that kind of stuff then? No, but then if it's something else like now with crypto coming up, I don't know if you're interested, might be helpful there. So yeah, stuff like that. Anything not traditional.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:04] Yeah, I'm not too familiar with it. I've heard of it before. I think I think the tendency here is to want a degree or a certification that can solve all the problems.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:17] That.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:17] The reality is what's going to give you your best shot is relationships. Period. I can tell you get good at talking to people until you get good at working and selling yourself. You can't go in, you can't do 20 certifications, you can't get 20 stamps of approval and expect suddenly the gates to open up to these high finance jobs. It's going to be actually yes. Put it get to getting the CV properly structured, showing that you have the financial modelling skills, showing you have this. But then on top of that, you need to be building relationships. And until you're comfortable doing that, until you get on the phone and force yourself to do these calls. You're going to be spinning your wheels. I applied to 500 places. I don't know what's going on. I only got three responses back and they were all rejections. Well, yeah. You're dropping your resume into a complete black hole. Nobody knows you there. And even especially for you, you're from. You're from know. For for all intents and purposes, for these people, they're like, they don't even know. They probably get even point to on the map or because of. So for you it's even harder. So you need a like the only way, number one is yes, get a job at a big multinational that you can do an internal transfer. That's the way out. That's the way out for you. And that doesn't mean that's the only way you should be going. You should be developing the skills of actually talking to people and getting on the phone and asking questions and learning about all these different careers. Because then you're going to be you're going to just sound so much. You're going to sound so much smarter on your 50th call than you did on your fifth. You know, you just are.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:54] It's just. It's just like there's no way to put it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:57] There's no way to, like, short circuit that. There's no certification that's going to suddenly open the doors and give you that job. It's going to be who you talk to. So most of these jobs, like investment banking analyst jobs, it's a it's just a grind. You're just grinding. It's not like you're not smart enough to do the job. You know.

Intern 4: [00:32:18] Okay. Thank you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:19] Yeah, I know.

Nabil: [00:32:20] I think that that's like. Like before it used to be such that, like, no one really had references, so you could just drop in, like, a good degree and get a job, walk away with a job. But, like, now it doesn't work that way because everyone has references. So then the question is like, how good are your references? And degrees do not matter as much. Like comparatively it's good to have, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:42] Like if you see like.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:43] Signal, like.

Nabil: [00:32:44] Exactly.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:45] To say that CFA isn't respected, it's very well respected or having the SES doesn't show drive and it's respect. Is your time really best spent like getting those certifications or is it getting into the right comp. I think it's getting into the right company and like actually.

Nabil: [00:33:01] Getting those relationships and like marketing yourself more or less. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:07] There's. So I hope I'm not like, deflating any hopes you have, because I think anyone can get anywhere from anywhere in the world at this point because there's so much information out there and there's like everyone's a click away from LinkedIn. They really are. So. Um. And you're here and you hear it. So you got Wall Street based on your resume. You have a huge advantage.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:34] I'm not kidding.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:37] So investment investment banker says MBA is more management. Leadership oriented and thin would be more specific about the actual matter. That's correct. Any other, I think, relevant question?

Nabil: [00:33:51] Yeah. There's a question earlier from an investment banker. Much above the career, an IBM CFA MBA. A question like right about that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:59] Yeah, Tan said honestly, that's the tough part. Patrick grabbing the phone and networking. Yeah. And tonight, honestly, like it is the hard part and that but that's the most important part in terms of like whether you're going to have success or not. So like the good part is you don't actually need to grab the phone. I'm not telling you to cold call people. So like, that's super intimidating. You're going to get hung up on 98% of the time. So, like, I'm just asking you to send messages over LinkedIn and connect with 100 people a day. I connection requests 100 people a day. It sounds like a lot. But it takes like 2 seconds, not 2 seconds, takes 20 seconds. So like, once you do that, once you have those connections, then it's like, okay, now let me tailor this to have a short message in terms of like really love, just a ten minute chat on the phone. It's building up that list of people you've spoken with, keeping them updated on your progress. Suddenly, like they're going to feel a vested interest in making sure they help you and they pull you along. And that's the goal here, is you get get those mentors, get those natural mentors to feel like they're bought in on your success. So sorry, Nabil. I can't see that question. Can you?

Nabil: [00:35:18] Yeah. Hey, are there any career paths slash options in finance that you consider underrated or something? That is not well known but people should know about? Should know more about that. Maybe something that lets you have a decent work life balance with good compensation structure. I know corporate banking is one of them.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:37] Yeah, corporate banking.

Nabil: [00:35:38] That's the question.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:39] Even. Yeah. Fp And a type roles where you're like an assistant to a CFO, but again, like to get the best jobs, they're oftentimes like the easiest way to get the best jobs there is to do a do a high finance internship, but you could also do corporate development. So if you do like M&A type stuff, the point is like all these jobs tend to be pretty bad when you start. So like, it's funny because, like, the bankers are like, Oh, this is horrible. I'm working crazy hours. And then you look at, like, the consultant, they're like, okay, well, I'm almost working those same hours, but I'm getting paid 50% less and I have to fly like people. People have to fly like every week and be sent to who knows where in the world. But yeah, it's a great question. I think. There's. There's not too many like. Careers out there. There are some people on Wall Street races that would argue that private wealth management, if people stick it out and manage money, it's lower paying. It's super tough to build your initial book of business. But then once you do that, you know, if you stick with it for 20, 30 years, by the time you're like 50, you can be clearing a lot of money if you have if you stick with it. So it's one of those things and that's not, yeah, you're more around during market hours, but that's not something where you're slaving away like 100 hours a week.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:04] It's more like a steady 50 to 70 hours throughout. But that you've got to be very happy with or very comfortable with people saying no to you. And you have to be again, what's most important for the private wealth management and managing people's money, relationships and connecting with people? So either way, either way, work on that. Any suggestions on how to balance between networking and working on technical skills? I've talked to a few professionals. It was a bit hard for me to understand them. How can you give me more examples? What do you mean? It was hard for you to understand them like you didn't. Oh, you didn't understand like the lingo and stuff they were talking about. That's just going to be reading. I read financial newspapers, read the forums, try to understand all the lingo, look at the glossary we have on the site. So people start saying like, Leo, you're like, I'm no idea what boss. Like, you should know. You should not, not up front, but like, hopefully it scares you enough. You should be taking notes in these. And if you're too afraid to ask like what something is, write it down and go look it up after. Um. Brandon asks a great question Is it damaging to have too many connections and not reaching out to all of them? I can tell you it's damaging for me with 30,000 connections because I can't add anybody else.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:26] No.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:28] No, I don't. I don't see how that's how that would ever hurt you. I don't think people are going to care. Right that you have connections. And if you connect somebody and they they accept your and you never reach out to them, they're never going to talk to you. They'll probably probably won't give any value to you if you never leverage it. But I don't think it's going to.

Intern 1: [00:38:48] Anecdotal thing, this one person that I have on LinkedIn was saying like, Oh, I noticed that you have like a lot of people on LinkedIn. Have you reached out to all of them? I'm like, Oh, like not yet. And they're like, Oh, you better get to that because like, I don't.

Intern 1: [00:39:00] Know, but like when.

Intern 1: [00:39:00] I see someone who I am connected to and they haven't like at all made contact with me, I find it a little annoying. That's why I thought I'd ask. I didn't know if I was just like a one person thing.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:09] Well, I do agree with the sense of like, you shouldn't just be connecting to connecting. You should be connecting with a goal to actually you should be reaching out. You shouldn't be like connecting to that. So like when I say 100 than that, you should be ready to actually reach out to them and say, Hey, thanks so much for the connection. I saw that you work here today. You know, I'd love to stay in touch and let you know I'm a I'm a junior at XYZ call, Whatever it is, just give an introduction to yourself so that at least there's some context. So later on, when you reach out and give an update or say, Hey, I'd love to hop on the phone, I have this interview coming up with XYZ Bank. I notice that you worked in a similar fund or similar group. Then there's like that context there, and it's not just collecting connections for the sake of connecting connections. It's actually. Making connections in order to try and get on the phone and build a relationship. So, yeah. I wouldn't just leave those. I agree with that. I think it's a really nuanced point. I think there's a few people are going to care about that. Um. People were going to care about that. And be careful what you put out there, guys, on LinkedIn. And on any social media platform. I mean, it's common sense, but like people will check your social media. So if you have an Instagram, Facebook, I highly recommend putting it on private. You don't want people making judgments on whatever you're wearing a certain something you look a certain way like there's very little upside to being public with your.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:37] And I'm I'm pretty public with it. Just that's just because I have a totally I'm not trying to get a job in corporate finance or investment so like it's totally different. So don't look at mine as like an example. Look at like other professionals who are in like the top jobs there. It's very little out there. And that's another thing, like when you do land a job or the Humblebrag, don't do the Humblebrag. I want to thank everyone and their mothers for this week, this this week long internship I landed that was only given to 5% of the applicants that try to stay away from that. Try to just have a really tight CV with quantifiable, quantified stuff and not so much the not so much to the public humblebrag and like making big announcements like that for like an internship. It's just people, some people in the industry, it rubs in the wrong way. They just roll their eyes and there's like, Oh my gosh, this kid, this kid thinks he's like broken in and he's just doing a week long like spring internship or something and uni. It's a better just to keep it quiet, just do instead of the public blast, try to get the one on one connections going. You're going to it's going to do a lot more. But good question, Brandon, about that. Too many connections. I don't think it's going to hurt you, but I think you're missing an opportunity if you're not actually reaching out to these people after they accept your connection requests. My guess is what percentage of the people you're reaching out to actually connecting to you? That's a great question. 20%.Ten.

Intern 1: [00:42:02] No, I think my connection request is pretty good is probably closer to like 25, 25%. Yeah, it's really awful. Yeah. Yeah. I had to tighten up in profile a bit, but it's doing a lot better now.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:18] Awesome. Are you. Are you. Can you share with the group kind of what you're saying in this connection request?

Intern 1: [00:42:24] It really kind of depends. So like I'm on the retail end for one of the banks that I want to work at. So if I'm reaching out to someone there, I'm like, I'm third year student and fellow X, Y, Z banker.

Intern 1: [00:42:35] On like the.

Intern 1: [00:42:36] Retail side. I'm hoping once I graduate to kind of lateral into a role and it's called Jkm for this bank. So global capital markets, it's wondering if I can talk to you a little bit about the career path and I have some specific questions in regards to like what it's like working for X, Y, Z Bank.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:55] Yeah, perfect.

Intern 1: [00:42:57] If it's like. Something I don't know them, it's just it's a version of that. But I include something instead of being, um, fellow.

Intern 1: [00:43:04] X, y, Z bank banker, I'm like.

Intern 1: [00:43:05] Oh, I'm CFA level one candidate or something kind of to replace that box.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:10] Yes, I'd be careful with saying you're a candidate for CFA level one.

Intern 1: [00:43:13] I know. Yeah, I've heard that. Kind of like, rub people the wrong way. Apparently.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:17] It's like you're like all you got to do is sign up.

Intern 1: [00:43:21] Yeah, I know, I know. Right? So it's kind of like.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:24] I think I think better to leave that out. But that's great. That's great that you're, like, trying to make it relevant and show that you're like, I like it, right? So my point is, I rather you say something like. And I noticed I noticed that you you've worked at that ad for this many years. So make it specific to that person. So I thought you might have some insight into this specific role that I have questions on. And then at least you're like. It's taking a little bit more time. But that's probably why your your connection rate is higher because you're not just saying, hey, connect with me and hitting the dummy.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:01] It is going like this.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:05] Tony, That's a good question. Does it make a difference if you don't post on your LinkedIn about the opportunities you have taken up? I So there's two things today. There's like the ability to post onto LinkedIn about like updates and stuff like that. I don't think you need to make public your updates on your job searches and all that stuff. I'd keep that more private, but you should be filling out your LinkedIn profile to have a photo. Number one smiling photo. You look happy but professional. So ideally something like this. What I'm wearing with a plain background. Nothing. Nothing like you're in your bedroom or something weird. And then specifically under that, you should be having your experience. So Wall Street Oasis internship can be there. You could put the. Yeah. So Brandon, just actually we link to our articles. You can absolutely link to your articles, but I would look at more the example we have in the Slack group in terms of how to show it on your CV rather than necessarily even linking to the specific articles. But you can you can do that. You can post to that. I don't think it's adding that much value. I think what's more important is that you're showing you have an internship, it's relevant, it's related. Talk about the financial modeling training you're doing. Once you get some of the free courses, that's going to be super relevant.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:15] It's going to have the keywords and then maybe a short. So I'm reading that and maybe have a short have your education, have your school there, have all that. But people underestimate having a smiling photo is a big deal. People are much more likely to respond to you and having at least some stuff in there in terms of internship experience and having your school. Tonight ass. I'm pretty bad at socializing through apps, so I barely post anything on any of my social networks as long as I have my profile in order. It's good, right? Yeah. I'm not saying have social media open. I'm saying have that private. So like your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok, whatever, Make sure people can't find it or it's private. So because you don't want for your if it's with your friends, like you don't want people seeing that. So make it so just your actual connections can see your stuff for LinkedIn where it's more public facing. You definitely want that filled out. You want your smiling face, you want your internship stuff there, you want all that stuff as if it's your CV. It's just a reflection of your CV. You can have some bullets there as well in terms of showing what you did. What am I forgetting, Nabil? Anything else around advice around social media and LinkedIn in particular. You're muted.

Nabil: [00:46:42] Oh, yeah, That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Just make it look like a CV. Don't. Yeah. Don't boast like, random, humble rags and stuff and. Yeah, connect to people.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:52] About what you like.

Nabil: [00:46:54] Exactly. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:55] Be careful about what you like. So if you're super liberal or your super.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:01] Conservative, be careful.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:05] Be careful because you start liking all the stuff that's super liberal or all the stuff that's super conservative on either side and you're getting interviewed by somebody more moderate on their on the other side, they may see that you just hurt yourself for no good reason.

Nabil: [00:47:21] Exactly.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:22] So be careful. I had I just heard about a deal, a M&A deal that got blown up because some guy had like something or commented on something about a conservative figure and the fund that was looking to invest and buy his company was they had somebody on the board that was a little bit more liberal, so probably lost the kid 500,000. So it happens.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:46] So don't.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:47] Don't think that it doesn't happen. So people check your LinkedIn, your profile is like. I think it's important that you keep as much as you want and it doesn't mean you can't be active in your community and doing all this stuff, but it just just be careful. Like if you're trying to break in, I think initially to be a little bit more closed off on the personal stuff and try to break in and then you can be a little bit more vocal on either side if you want to be. But you've got to be careful. You've got to be careful out there. And today, if you're pretty bad at socializing through apps, I hope that doesn't mean LinkedIn. I hope that doesn't mean you're not willing to get on a phone call and talk with these these professionals because you're going to need that. You need that skill. So you might as well rip the Band-Aid off now and just torture yourself and get on a few phone calls. You're not going to die. I promise. Sounding stupid is fine. Asking dumb questions is fine, especially if you're younger and you're just learning. Um. Yeah. So that's fine. If you have a if you're comfortable having conversations, not being active and posting stuff, that's actually a benefit to be more private. So it's not going to hurt you, but just make sure you're actually putting the time to make your LinkedIn profile look polished, making it look like your CV. That's the other thing that we had. One of our top intern sent me his CV today. Or I was I was doing the thing where I was helping introduce him to other people through my LinkedIn network and somebody like, Oh yeah, send a CV. He sends it to me. There's a spelling error. Like this is the one page that you have to get perfect. That means bullets have to be aligned. That means you better spell check it. You better make sure your contact info is correct. I've had that. People have said, Oh, I spent my email wrong.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:41] And I got to get cut.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:42] This is true stuff. This happens like print it out. Don't just read it on a screen. It's very hard to catch errors on the screen, print it out and go through with a highlighter. You'll find error after error after error, but after you've gone through it ten times, ideally it's in a good spot. But that means actually going through it that many times and being that careful.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:03] Any other.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:04] Comments on.

Nabil: [00:50:05] Something? Could we make a group chat with people who are studying for the CFA? Yeah, I just did that last week. I think.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:13] Yeah, about that. So you did a channel or you did a different group?

Nabil: [00:50:17] I just put a channel. So we would just talk.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:20] Yeah, I don't see it. I see general and random.

Nabil: [00:50:24] Oh, boy. I'll have to. I don't know. I'll just. I'll give you one. Let me see if that works.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:30] So, yeah, we can create one in the slack because I'm sure there's a big group doing CFA.

Nabil: [00:50:35] Yeah. I don't know why it doesn't show them. I'll just start it. Yeah, it's Tod now. Could you see it?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:43] Um. But in Slack.

Nabil: [00:50:46] Yeah. And Slack. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:49] I don't see it. I can add the channel. Maybe you want me to do it.

Nabil: [00:50:53] Yeah. I mean, I created it. Let me check.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:57] Anyways. We'll figure it out.

Nabil: [00:50:58] We'll get it up. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:02] Any other questions? Bhavan.

Intern 5: [00:51:06] Yeah. Hi. Hi. So as you spoke about CFA not being a really great option for investment banking, which until now I thought was really great for me. But so, I mean, what would you suggest for me? Like I'm entering my third year of college right now, and we spoke about networking and communication and all, but I need something like some major degree to get into investment banking, right? Only networking and communication won't help me to get there. And I'm going to be arguing that you needed a specialized course or maybe an MBA or masters in a specific field.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:43] Yeah, MBA if you get into top MBA. I talked to Nabil about this all the time, about how he's going to do once he leaves. Wall Street races. I'm trying to hold on to him, but just.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:57] Know he.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:58] We've talked about this. He was going to come help Wall Street races, help build this program. But I think for for Nabil, it's the same thing. He's trying to figure out where my best options how can I keep as many doors open? So we talked about getting to London because the visa is easier there. We talked about specifically certain programs that have good placements. That's what. So what was it like?

Nabil: [00:52:18] Yes.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:19] Yes.

Nabil: [00:52:20] That's because they have the exemption for the math. It saves a lot of time for bank, but.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:26] So. Yes. But then that's a one year program, right?

Nabil: [00:52:30] Yeah, that's the one year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:31] It's a one year program, which is nice, too. So, yes, I would suggest something like that is a great place to kind of scoot yourself in. And you're right, if you're coming from I mean, I don't know how your scores are and how you're doing, but if you're coming from, where are you located right now? India.

Intern 5: [00:52:48] I'm going to India. I'm moving to Australia for my third year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:51] So what are you doing in Australia? What school?

Intern 5: [00:52:56] I speak.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:58] You're breaking up a little bit.

Nabil: [00:53:00] Spin. I think that's the one that branches in like Dubai, Australia and then Singapore.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:08] I think it's a certain school. I think I get stuck.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:10] Yeah, yeah, you get stuck. So you were saying you're going to Australia, I think.

Intern 5: [00:53:13] Yeah. So one in Singapore, one in Dubai. Two years in Sydney.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:18] So, Nabil, you probably know more about this. What would you suggest? I mean, it kind of depends where you want to be post graduation, too, right? Yeah. Here's where you focus your efforts on the communication, the networking.

Nabil: [00:53:30] Exactly. I don't think they feed into it, though, do they? So I think it's more I think it's more corporals rather than I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, if that's what you're looking for, then.

Intern 5: [00:53:45] So I was planning for before I was planning. I'll start my CFA in my third year and maybe I'll do two or three years of I got a job or something and then they plan for my MBA. That's what my basic plan looked like.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:59] It's not a bad plan. I just I question I mean, maybe maybe, you know, maybe the CFA is given more weight outside the US for for banking.

Nabil: [00:54:06] It is, it is for sure. But again, like, like anything else, if you don't network the CFA, the MBA or whatever you have is useless. Like I'm not like it's blunt, right? Like, what are you going to do with all these degrees that you have pretty much anything if you, if you can't like, go out, meet people, talk to them, Like if they're not impressed by you, you're not going to get a referral. You're not going to like, learn the right job. One one way of a bachelors out is like placements. Like you've got to see what your placement looks like, like you go into the right channels because I know for a fact that SPG doesn't feed a lot into IAB. At least it's minimal because I used to work with the lecture, the MBA at the Y. So yeah. So again, like it's all about knowing what you want to do, even about like the schools, the MBA schools that we were talking about with Patrick. If you're going into consulting, then you probably have to go to Paris and do one of those instead, AGC or whatever. But then if you're into finance, you'll have to go and do like London LVS LLC. He goes to a lot of places.

Nabil: [00:55:10] I think they feed into a lot of places, but things like that, like you need to know what you're doing and then see if the placement works. Your plan is great, it's just that the MBA CFA probably leads you more to like. A corporate kind of thing. Not too much into IAB per se. Like directly IAB IP is all relationships like. It does help them. I just met recently someone ATF like we had a dinner and he'd done CFA and had an engineering degree who got into Citibank as an investment banking associate. So yeah, it's, it's like again. Then I asked him, like it's just not working for him. He moved from India to here, so that's a big jump. But in his networking, he reached out to people on LinkedIn here, got on the call and then had their as you may not, you land some good keywords in there, you know, so that they fix it up. And that's how it works generally. And there's a lot of demand for people like Patrick were saying, even here for EIB, people have done investment banking analyst. They've gone to the program. So yeah, that's yeah, that's the thing. So you've got a network. Think it's.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:13] A bad.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:14] Plan?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:15] I don't know if it's as focused as like I think to be able to tell it, to tailor what you're saying. Like maybe there's a little bit more focus, maybe doesn't need the CFA or that might be too much. Or maybe just does a level one.

Nabil: [00:56:27] Everybody just like network more honestly, like if you can do a CFA plus do networking, that's amazing. But then if you're doing like just CFA and like not doing anything else on the side, like that's kind of pointless. You're wasting three years and not like your career doesn't go anywhere, right? Like, why do you want to do that? So.

Intern 5: [00:56:44] But it's natural. Yeah, but the thing Patrick said that I mean, is it feasible for me to do CFA and be a board or

Nabil: [00:56:54] Yeah, there are a lot of programs that offer it now, like CFA is not. I mean, it's not I don't know if it's it's not that hard if you put your foot effort into it, especially if you come from something with a finance background. It's definitely not hard. But again, it just depends on you. Like what's your background? I imagine if you're coming from engineering, you have no clue about finance or CFA. That gives you a lot of knowledge. But then if you already know a lot of stuff, it's kind of easy. Like it's not that hard. So you just gotta make sure you dedicate enough time. It's all time management, right? If you are dedicating this these many hours to networking, meeting people, all that and then you know your time management is really good, you can do a lot of things, but then that's what it comes down to at the end. Like are you maximizing your time that you have? That's the limiting factor. So yeah, that's, that's how I'd go about it. I wouldn't like be like, Oh, what works for me might not work for you, right? So I wouldn't say I would do an MBA. Do a CFA. Forget about networking. No, it's like everything of your life.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:54] You kind of have to have balance. You have to have great time management skills. But the good news is, if you think you want to do banking and you're actually willing to work 80 hours a week, you're probably only in class 10 to 15 hours a week, probably only have another about 10 hours to 15 hours of work, homework or essays and exam prep. It's not that hard. School is not that hard if you're really good at time management to do well. And so from there. Theoretically, you have another 30 hours to 50 hours to do a lot of damage, and that can include 10 hours a week, 15 hours a week of networking. That can include 10 to 15 hours a week on financial model. And they include CFA Prep that can include what have you. So I think I think it's about making sure you're having that balance on that extra time and setting aside dedicated blocks in your calendar where you're like for these 2 hours I am doing only I'm doing outreach on LinkedIn. These 2 hours I'm doing only financial modelling training. I'm going to get through the Excel modelling course.That type of stuff.

Intern 5: [00:58:54] Thank you so much.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:00]  You're welcome.Thanks for joining. Thanks for helping us. I think we're going to call it guys. It's been an.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:06] Hour.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:09] But I appreciate all the questions. Some really good ones. I think maybe it'd be helpful. Nabil Besides the international course, let's try to get people there that I think it'd be really helpful to maybe do. Like, it'd be fun. Maybe next week we could do, like, LinkedIn because, like, if people want to volunteer, we can go through their LinkedIn. Like they'd be like and we're like, Do this, improve this, or even resumes. We could do like have somebody's resume up on the thing. Maybe we could black out the name, but just start like tearing it apart. And I would say like how I would change things. I think it'll be really informative and people are probably making similar mistakes. Got it. Tony likes that idea and to make it more fun and make it a little bit more visual instead of just a few faces and stuff like that. So we'll try to maybe we can do that. In the chat. We'd say, Who wants to volunteer? Will black out, Will black out your name? If you want to send your resume through, we can do a. Do I.

Nabil: [01:00:10] Become Blackout.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:11] Lincoln? I promise I'll be very ruthless in me. Just kidding. I'll try to be as nice as possible. But like with the understanding that a lot of people are making these. These same errors, and by the way, it would be a free it's a free resume review for you. So that's a that's a bonus. So.

Nabil: [01:00:27] We could do that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:29] All right, everybody. Thanks so much for your time and and for your your efforts with the program. And we will talk to you again in one week. Hi, everybody. And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.