Any success stories of people switching from Government jobs to Private Sector?
 

Seems that many people I spoke to in the private sector don't have a good impression of people from government jobs and have the perception that these people are slow. The worse I heard are army officer regulars being shunned at interviews, especially with how the rest of the male population perceives of the SAF.

Most who do desire to switch careers often have to take pay cuts or rebrand themselves like going for a Masters.

Any comments?

air force technician. completed bachelor of business and masters of science in 7 years air force. made 36k pa in air force. now make 110k pa in US MNC after 3 years. =)

Guards regular. Poly cert. Left after 6 yrs of service and joined the banking industry as sales. Make around $35K when inside. Earned that amount in 6 months when i joined the bank. After a year its about $70K. Can be more depending how hard you choose to chiong.

Captain in armor, left at 4.8k to join private equity. After 5 years now 16k+ / month not including bonus.

just to check with you

you got wat class of honours?
what is your starting pay when you fresh grad from university?
how long did you sign on?

can tell how much is the annual increment while you are a CPT in SAF

any info on how much increment when promote from
CPT(1) to CPT(2)
CPT(2) to MAJ(1)


i am just curious to know

And the more pertinent question is how the heck you managed to get into PE from a non related line like the army, when cpt ranks are a dime a dozen nowadays ...

when ppl from more directly related IB and treasury functions with Harvard or Oxbridge first class honours are struggling without success to get in...

must be thru connections right ?

So what if through connections? Ask so much means you don't have. Don't waste time la. can make it can make it, cannot make it cannot make it. hahaha

Actually no.

I'm in BB IB, making a similar amount pre bonus at VP lvl, but lifestyle sucks and career lifespan isn't fantastic. In the past, where bonus was a year or more, I can see half a million or so, but this year, with so much pressure on bonuses (this yr, any bonus at all would be a pleasant surprise), and with a couple of rounds of retrenchment already, am wondering if its worth the grind.

Have been trying to get into PE for some time (slightly better lifestyle, similar money but much more fulfilling work), but have found it tough without the appropriate connections. Most of the people I know have either gone in direct post MBA or as a fresh grad or via connections.

This is the first time I've ever heard of a mid career entry via the military (Especially as a rank and file cpt - if a LTC by 30 or BG by 35, ok, then I see maybe they are hiring as an exceptional talent), and was wondering if there is an additional angle which I have missed and I can try.

all 3 posted by the same person?

Probably a "cannot make it" ex-army regular who is now a part-time taxi driver and toilet cleaner... Projecting his fantasy in the forum :p Such a loser....

Some of you very funny leh, ask for success stories and examples. Then when people share success story, one by one all line up to humtum with the usual "just loser fantasizing" "only successful because of connections" blah blah

So why bother to ask and read in the first place if you not willing to accept there are people who are better than you?

You are missing the entire point, my friend.

The point is not just to share the end point, but more importantly, the story of how-to-get-there. Just like there is no point sharing a story of how I met an ex school teacher who is now a multi millionaire , without telling me how he got there. is it thru winning the lottery, becoming a super successful tutor, or becoming a successful business man etc. and how I can try to replicate it.

Life is not all about ability. It's also about career planning, strategic career positioning and contacts.

This is a practical forum where we can ideally hear career tips, and not just start point and end point pie in the sky stories, which do nothing for us in a practical sense.

Hmm... you can check his postings' IP?

this is interesting... how did you manage to do it?

Have to disagree with that.

First of all, nobody is going to share practical tips on how to get there. For anybody to get to success it is a combination of thousands of actions taken from day 1 and siezing hundred pieces of luck and opportunity. How to explain all of this in a forum? You will need to write an encyclopedia for that.

You look through the forum you know what I mean, it is all generic stuff like musn't give up, build your network, learn from mistakes, pick the right industry, get relevant qualification etc. Miwashi is one good example, poor chap has been asking around for actual advice how to be a media editor and get out of his grass cutting job, to date I still haven't seen anyone remotely even telling him useful actionable items.

"career planning, strategic career positioning and contacts" are big words, but mean nothing in this forum.

agree with 9231. the best advice is to just keep looking & striving, and be super competitive like Greypiggi who kept benchmarking himself in terms of income and wealth.

if you are a sprinter, you wanna know if you 9.8s is among the best. if you are a salaryman, you wanna know if your 10k is among the best.

Agree.
There is hardly anyone who will write a step-by-step guide.
What is useful is the raw inspiration from these stories if you choose not to be skeptical. This will then push you to create your own step-by-step guide that works best for yourself.

Agree that no one is going to write a step by step guide.

But agree with the earlier guy that start point and end point stories are no use. As the IB person said, he has never seen someone go to PE directly from the army, so if the army capt can share his story, it would be interesting.

But he seems to have disappeared. So it sounds like a fraudulent post.

Maybe he's managing his dad's money? That's also "private equity".

Yup, I've interviewed a guy with a gap in his CV who said similar things, except that he's clearer: "I was managing the family's investments."

Since I am from the PE industry, I felt I have to say something.

1) PE is a small industry in Singapore, and the people hiring are mainly the banks, family funds, government funds (like GIC, Temasek) and a few institutions. I am excluding the funds of funds from this. By 'small' I mean the number of prospective employers and not necessarily the fund size they are managing.
2) story of Army Captain making the switch to PE directly does seem implausible as I definitely would not hire someone straight from the Army. Unless of course, he joins his family fund or he took an MBA from Harvard and had some internship before making the switch. Even so, at best he joins as an associate.

back on the topic on making transition to private sector. I worked in a statutory board for 5 years but managed to switch to an investment related role under one of the government holdings for another 5 years. In between, I took 2 years off to do an MBA in Stanford before joining the private sector in the PE industry. First based in HK and now in China.

I hope that helps.

Nice. A BB IB person available for hire here...

No way, there are hundreds of boutique asset management firms out there and the industry is by no means "small" in Singapore. Banks, GIC Temasek and large institutions are just the more popular ones that every layman on the street knows.

I worked as IT engineer for an outsourcing firm last year. Many of these companies outsource their IT maintainance and support & my team have been looking after their networks for a lot of them.

They are usually small with <20 employees and tend to take up offices in less expensive areas instead of the usual Raffles Place / Marina Bay area. Take a stroll along Amoy St / Club St / Tanjong Pagar area and you will see a lot of them tucked in some small shophouse 2nd or 3rd floor. Beach road area like Key Point, Concourse, Fortune Centre also got quite a bit.

Another kind of company that largely similar to PE are the private foundations. Their investment process is not too different from PE, but they tend to be more conservative. Sometimes when I talk to them, many are from big banks and institutions, but took a pay cut for more control over their lives or other non-monetary fulfilment.

Did you manage to switch to PE?

Bro, there is a major difference between private equity and asset management, which by and large buy mainly public equity counters.

Also, if you want to do meaningful PE work, you work with one of the major players, not a 5 man operation, just like if you want to do IB, you work with a BB and not with an accounting firm (with apologies to the hard working corporate financiers in the big 4).

Hi, I know what I'm talking about. These firms hardly dabble with public equities or derivatives, it makes no sense for them to do that. Most retail investors or pension funds who want to dabble with listed instruments will simply go to the big mutual fund companies or banks or do it themselves. They will starve to death if they position themselves as yet another "trader" or "stock picker".

And no, contrary to popular belief, PE is not some labour intensive operation where you need truck loads of people. A 10 man team with the intellectual capital and correct connections plus a few admin people is enough to run the show. Many of them tie up with bankers, lawyers, tax advisors on an-adhoc basis depending on needs.

The reason why PE creates this wrong perception of some humongus financial institution with super sophsiticated business modelling is because of the few mega billion dollar LBOs or privatization that gets reported in the papers. Another misconception is that only big banks and players can afford to pay well, big mistake.... Incentives are dependent on performance and the type of scheme the company offers, there is nothing inherent that makes big players pay better than small ones.

I do not doubt you. Cannot fake the indepth info you have provided above.

Let me clarify my comments.

The smaller houses you speak of are not likely to be hiring from the the govt sector, or from MBA schools. They would only hire either persons with connections or persons with very specific industry knowledge. For general experience hires in the context of this thread, it would only be the big houses which will be providing jobs of any significance, and even so, only very very selectively to top talents.

Continuing from my above comments and looking at the follow-up, my humble views as follows:

1) to the IT engineer that claims that there are many PE firms in Singapore, you are partially right. Anyone can invest in private companies, pre-IPO deals or just tag along a lead investor, but doesn't make one a PE firm. It simply makes private equity an asset class in the entire portfolio.
2) to the guy/gal that says that there is difference between PE firm and asset management companies, I agree with him or her.
3) a PE firm is one where the entire fund is dedicated to Private Equity. Partners take active role (which include board positions) in the deals they invest and take it public or exit via trade sale.
4) very few firms can survive by taking on one asset class.
5) family foundations or a few rich individuals can come together with a few hundred million to form a fund. But most of them take on a portfolio approach and spread their investment across various asset classes. They are fund managers and they definitely will not take board positions in several companies. Their private equity are at most passive. Again, these are not PE firms.

Hi there, thanks for sharing, but I differ from some of your views which I think are too black & white in a world where all sorts of hybrids exist:

Firstly from my observation, smaller firms tend to be more flexible and will seize whatever investment opportunities that come along as long as they think can get superior returns. They may start out with a focus on PE (the way you defined it) but invest in other instruments or tag along as joint junior partners when the opportunity arise.

I don’t see how a firm that ends up making some additional non-PE investments that results in a portfolio weightage of say 75% PE / 25% Others is suddenly not a PE firm. There is no international professional body that stipulates that a firm can only be called PE if 100% of its assets is in PE – I do agree that this is usually the practice in banks and large houses, but it is by no means a definition of what constitutes a PE firm itself.

As for your comment that partners take active role in ultimately unlocking value through IPO or M&A activity, that I do agree. But the problem with that is what exactly is meant by “active”? At what level of “activeness” does it qualify as a PE firm and at what level of “inactiveness” does it qualify as passive investor?

My own take is that control and influence in a firm can be roughly classified into 3 tiers:

a) Strategic level – Management of enterprise risk, capital allocation, capital structure, appointment of key executives
b) Business level – Formulation of key strategies like marketing, sales, supply chain management, R&D, etc.
c) Operational level – Nuts and bolts of the planning and executing of the company’s strategy

Depending on the investment and firm in question, deals can range from deep control even up to the operational level to just maintaining a strategic oversight, i.e. meet once every quarter during board meeting to approve and make decisions at the strategic level. Of course there are a lot of in betweens where partners make key decisions at the strategic level while maintaining a heavy influence at the business level.

There is also the question of control vs influence. Depending on the structure of the deal in question, a firm with an investment can end up just being one of the several key stakeholders that can influence decision, but not the sole authorizer. At what level of the sliding scale between control and influence does a firm cross over to become “active” and qualify as a “PE firm”?

Of interest also is that there is a debate now over what sort of property fund is considered as private equity since they seem to share some common characteristics of "nomral" PE fund while still having perculiarities unique to the real estate industry.

What I’m trying to articulate from all this is that while there are some general characteristics that most people can agree on what makes a Private Equity firm, I would not agree to box them up into defining traits such as "portfolio must be 100% private equity investments". There are always shades and hybrids in any industry as every company is unique and will not fall in nicely into solid well defined boxes.

From my observation, many small firms are surviving precisely because they take niche in a particular asset class or industry. Their claimed specialization in specific instruments is also usually their unique value proposition. I hardly see any small firms that go about on a broad based approach diversifying across multiple asset classes in their funds, this is the area of mutual funds and they will be outclassed by the BBs due to branding and access to capital.

Larger foundations sometimes have a specific team that focuses on PE that is separate from the general fund, but they are quite few and I think it’s probably not a good example, thus will retract my statement with apologies.

The 2 of you above talk machiam like dam expert like that. How about telling us what position in which company and your annual salary and bonus first instead of all this rubbish about PE industry?

It is obvious you are just some low level executive in some SME trying to fantasize about being IB and finance industry.

I think the info provided is very interesting and not gave me some insight into the PE industry.

Your post? A typical response and zero value add.

Posts like the above are becoming an annoying pattern in these forums.

How come every thread I read through somehow shifts to topics on financial services/banking? :) Interesting..

Anyway since the latest discussion seems to be on PE, I wonder what all the hype is about? I'm from the sell-side and my seniors tell me that pay is much better here. So aside from work-life balance, compensation shoud favor sell-side roles (be it PE, Fund Mgmt or HF). Anyone care to validate this?

PE, Hedge funds are buy-side business. The only sell-side aspect of this industry is during fund raising. Sell-side makes money quicker and faster. You are from the sell side, so you know better as well, typically it is very transaction based. I can't speak for the HF guys but for PE, if you do well, you get a cut (called carry interest) besides the normal salary which should be similar to financial industry rates. Associates get 80-100k USD/year. Partners draw about 400-500k USD/year. what you want is to hit a deal with a 10x multiple and that is where the big money comes in. Unless the fund is exceptional, most PE guys get their carry interest toward the end of the fund life. (8-10 years)

What talking you? Where got PE or HF hire sell-side one?

Most funds dun have a 8-10 years life. Carried interests are subject to complicated banking, deferral and clawback mechanisms. You cerntainly don't need to wait for 8-10 years until fold up to get them, otherwise who will want to join a company & wait 10 years for bonus.

By PE standards 10x multiple is slightly below average, not outstanding where big money comes in.

Obviously another outsider shooting through the hip.

Sorry, I meant favor sell-side roles (vs buy-side roles PE, HF, FM).

afaik, PE pays much better than IBD

I think the first 2 guys (gal?) debating about classification of PE industry really know their stuff even though they disagree at some points, hard to fake all the detailed insider knowledge.

The rest all outsiders trying to act expert - nothing of substance except shouting about high salaries & bonus.