My plan for breaking into finance sector

Originally Posted by alwaysnforever

Thanks, but I will take my chances

Btw which area of FO are you in?

Treasury Sales -- some years in institutional, some in advising high net worth individual.. how I get into it ... long story and may not be applicable these days

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Advisor, how did you get into FO?

Ok.. here my story.. nothing interesting... you may treat it as a bedtime story.

More than 10 years ago, graduated with an finance degree with good honours, I thought the whole world is at my feet and the same aspirations like trader, fund manager in BB banks come into mind and are as determined as many bros here to break into these sectors... however economy is very bad during that time (from Asian Crisis to 911) and I cannot even find a perm job and end up as a photocopying/faxing boy in BB bank backoffice operations. After which , I move on to another BB bank middle office operation and thought that it is getting closer to FO dream only to find out the "glass ceiling" was unbreakable (else all hell broke lose and every single man in BO and MO will ask to transfer to FO). So this method does NOT work. Still, lots of the bros in BO and MO do not give up and try CFA, CPA, MBA, MFE and whatever you can find to break through the glass ceiling but all resulted in failure (and that was 10 years back when it is slightly easier and some ultra lucky ones really manage to sequeeze through). THen I thought that with the BB name, I can easily get a FO job in a 2nd tier bank e.g Merril Lynch BO to say BNP Paribus trader... that was wrong too and it did not work as well. THat was a great debate then " is it better to do a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier bank or a 3rd tier job in a 1st tier bank ?" and I was a great supporter of the latter because I really thought the brand name will see me through. How naive that is! I forgot the old saying in banking ops " you start in Ops, you rot in Ops". It was after many hard knocks then I appreciate the wisdom of "doing a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier organization" which I did gradually and since then, never leave the dealing room or other FO enviroment..

Originally Posted by Advisor

Ok.. here my story.. nothing interesting... you may treat it as a bedtime story.

More than 10 years ago, graduated with an finance degree with good honours, I thought the whole world is at my feet and the same aspirations like trader, fund manager in BB banks come into mind and are as determined as many bros here to break into these sectors... however economy is very bad during that time (from Asian Crisis to 911) and I cannot even find a perm job and end up as a photocopying/faxing boy in BB bank backoffice operations. After which , I move on to another BB bank middle office operation and thought that it is getting closer to FO dream only to find out the "glass ceiling" was unbreakable (else all hell broke lose and every single man in BO and MO will ask to transfer to FO). So this method does NOT work. Still, lots of the bros in BO and MO do not give up and try CFA, CPA, MBA, MFE and whatever you can find to break through the glass ceiling but all resulted in failure (and that was 10 years back when it is slightly easier and some ultra lucky ones really manage to sequeeze through). THen I thought that with the BB name, I can easily get a FO job in a 2nd tier bank e.g Merril Lynch BO to say BNP Paribus trader... that was wrong too and it did not work as well. THat was a great debate then " is it better to do a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier bank or a 3rd tier job in a 1st tier bank ?" and I was a great supporter of the latter because I really thought the brand name will see me through. How naive that is! I forgot the old saying in banking ops " you start in Ops, you rot in Ops". It was after many hard knocks then I appreciate the wisdom of "doing a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier organization" which I did gradually and since then, never leave the dealing room or other FO enviroment..

great story man. my personal advice to those is for those who are asipring to be in FO, are you willing to start low, if say u cannot get into the BBs?

e.g. Ops at foreign bank or even government job has much higher pay than say a trader assistant at an unknown fund.

Are you willing to stomach lower pay while starting out? And no, it is not taken as a certain fact that once u learn FO skills, u can confirm move to FO in BBs. There may be a risk that u may be forever stuck at mediacore funds or small trading houses. I have seen many people with profiles like that.

End of the day depends on what you value and how you see your odds in succeeding. E.g. if u cannot talk well, pls dun go into a sales job. if u are not good in maths, dun go into a quant role, etc.

[alwaysnforever]

Originally Posted by Advisor

Ok.. here my story.. nothing interesting... you may treat it as a bedtime story.

More than 10 years ago, graduated with an finance degree with good honours, I thought the whole world is at my feet and the same aspirations like trader, fund manager in BB banks come into mind and are as determined as many bros here to break into these sectors... however economy is very bad during that time (from Asian Crisis to 911) and I cannot even find a perm job and end up as a photocopying/faxing boy in BB bank backoffice operations. After which , I move on to another BB bank middle office operation and thought that it is getting closer to FO dream only to find out the "glass ceiling" was unbreakable (else all hell broke lose and every single man in BO and MO will ask to transfer to FO). So this method does NOT work. Still, lots of the bros in BO and MO do not give up and try CFA, CPA, MBA, MFE and whatever you can find to break through the glass ceiling but all resulted in failure (and that was 10 years back when it is slightly easier and some ultra lucky ones really manage to sequeeze through). THen I thought that with the BB name, I can easily get a FO job in a 2nd tier bank e.g Merril Lynch BO to say BNP Paribus trader... that was wrong too and it did not work as well. THat was a great debate then " is it better to do a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier bank or a 3rd tier job in a 1st tier bank ?" and I was a great supporter of the latter because I really thought the brand name will see me through. How naive that is! I forgot the old saying in banking ops " you start in Ops, you rot in Ops". It was after many hard knocks then I appreciate the wisdom of "doing a 1st tier job in a 3rd tier organization" which I did gradually and since then, never leave the dealing room or other FO enviroment..

im always a proponent of doing whatever u like, regardless of the reputation of the firm. If I can do research at a small firm, i can use it to meet other people in the area to network, and showcase my strength to vault higher into the places i wanna go to.

so you did treasury sales at a 3rd tier organisation? and slowly went up from there? Did you always wanted to do treasury sales in FO?

I started off thinking that TS is not so knowledgeable in this field..but as i read on, i realise there's just so much BS and smoke bombs going ard..I estimate that 90% of the people in this thread are not in banking..or at least FO banking..and TS probably sounds more sensible than most..

Just to put the record straight from someone in this industry..

Buy side analysts/ fund managers do use sell side research..but they don't follow blindly of course.

Most analysts start out from the sell side because buy side usually requires a certain amt of experience before u can break in..but there are outliers/exceptions of cos..

The best bet for TS is like what he already suggested..start out at smaller firms and gain the experience before moving on. Having said that, it will not be a walk in the park to get such a role cause competition for equity research is still very fierce even at smaller firms..

UBS would rather take someone who did 5 years of research in phillip securities over someone who did 5 years of Ops in Goldman Sachs..

If u're lucky enough to get in..then do the CFA..it's the gold standard for equity research & fund management. Yes..TS is also right..nobody starts off as a fund manager..

Good luck!

The food chain is something like from top to bottom

Traders, m&a bankers
Sales, advisory
Structuring
Research
Market risk, Quantitative research
Credit risk
Compliance, legal
Operation risk
Finance
IT
Ops

Is the scale based on pay? Why is quant research ranked alongside market risk?
Why is research ranked below structuring and sales?

[alwaysnforever]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is the scale based on pay? Why is quant research ranked alongside market risk?
Why is research ranked below structuring and sales?

I think for the reason that sales and structuring brings in more money than the research. All the top jobs can generate huge revenue for the company.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The food chain is something like from top to bottom

Traders, m&a bankers
Sales, advisory
Structuring
Research
Market risk, Quantitative research
Credit risk
Compliance, legal
Operation risk
Finance
IT
Ops

I'm here to learn...Can anyone segregate the above into FO, MO & BO? Thanks..

Originally Posted by alwaysnforever

im always a proponent of doing whatever u like, regardless of the reputation of the firm. If I can do research at a small firm, i can use it to meet other people in the area to network, and showcase my strength to vault higher into the places i wanna go to.

so you did treasury sales at a 3rd tier organisation? and slowly went up from there? Did you always wanted to do treasury sales in FO?

No. I wanted to be a trader. Just a trader in a dealing room without know what exactly is a trader and a trader of what 10 years back (just like a lot of bros here). Cannot even tell then what is the diff between prop trader, position trader, sales trader or just execution trader (or "dealer"). Don't know there were FX trader, equity trader, swap trader, money market trader, commodity trader, derivative trader in a banking dealing room.. just naive enough to think of being a trader and hopefully someone would taught me the tricks (which of course not)... Anyway, beside a short stint as a FI sales dealer in a small shop where there is a blurring of line between sales, dealing and trading, I ended up in the "2nd best" choice of Treasury sales