How should I get a job in finance?

November 1, 2006 3:12 PM

I'm a psychology/biology undergraduate senior graduating in the spring, help me get into a finance job in new york.

After majoring in psychology and biology I've realized I don't want to go into either of those fields. I want to do something in finance, perhaps corporate finance or investment banking instead.

I don't have any finance experience directly, but I've held a bunch of summer/during the school year job/internships mostly dealing with medical research, or psychology industry jobs.

So here's the question. Am I wasting my time trying to directly apply for an entry level job in some of the big banks since I don't have any specific industry experience? Should I try to find my way in through connections? Also, what kind of starting salary could I expect.

Some more background, I'm graduating with approx 3.8 average from a top 50 school in the new york area. Like I said I've held some jobs and internships, but nothing crazy prestigious or anything.

I'd appreciate any advice the mefiers have to offer.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (7 answers total)

There are a lot of people with finance backgrounds. It is very competitive, but there are a lot of jobs out there.

I'd suggest that you enroll in some accounting courses ASAP to get some background in finance. Why not stay in school another year and see if you can use some of your psych and bio classes to count for a finance major?

What happens if you don't like finance either? That may be a problem.
posted by k8t at 3:20 PM on November 1, 2006

You don't need finance experience to get a job as an investment banking analyst. You just need to be smart, hard-working and greedy. They put everyone through an extensive training program when you start. In fact, you are arguably better off without having done a finance undergrad and having done more interesting stuff instead. Check with your career center and see if any investment banks are recruiting on campus.

The unfortunate news is that most investment banks have already given out their full-time analyst offers to May/June 2007 grads by late-October. So, you likely missed out. The good news is that you avoided making your life hell for the next two years. Congrats.

What I say applies only to investment banking specifically. Other finance jobs operate differently and perhaps less rigidly. If you are dead-set on investment banking, get a big four or commercial banking job, contact the various HR departments of the major investment banks and see if you can sneak into undergrad recruiting next year or throw your name into the hat if they do any off-cycle hiring (which is rare). If that doesn't pan out and you still want to work in ibanking, get the best job you can, go to a top 5 business school for your MBA and then go in as an associate.

Email is in the profile if you have questions.
posted by mullacc at 3:36 PM on November 1, 2006

Also, what kind of starting salary could I expect.

For first-year investment banking analysts last year (June 05 - June 06), $55k salary, $8-$10k "relocation" bonus, ~$60-$80k annual bonus. The year before, annual bonuses for first-years were more like $45-$60k, and they were almost nothing in 2003.
posted by mullacc at 3:43 PM on November 1, 2006

Go to law school.

Ok kidding...sort of...

Seriously though? I don't know how much you need in the way of credentials, but networking never hurt so I'll talk about that.

Talk to professors. In professional schools the profs tend to be well connected with practitioners. Contact professors at your school and they may help you with making the right connections. You're interested, smart as hell, and technically-minded, and those three things mean a lot.

Why will professors help you out? They are good natured, and have the added motivation of wanting their school to do well, which means helping their students succeed. They also don't want to embarass their school by sending people who aren't bright. You are awesome, so you won't embarass the school *and* have the potential to do quite well, which will come back and help the university's reputation. Plus they are not just doing you a favor, but also doing their friends already in industry a favor by getting them a new worker bee. In practice, the more favors you can do for others the better, so you will represent a good (and unique given your background) opportunity to your professors.

You're ahead of the game in that you have a demonstrated interest in living in New York, and if you're from here more's the better. If your parents are from around here see what networking they can do for you, who is a friend of a friend of the family etc.

Your technical background helps you not only in terms of being able to handle complex analysis, but also because you may end up working with a particular industry where your expertise will come in handy - the health industry, for example, which is getting bigger and more important as the baby boomers age.

Who am I to tell you these things? Well I'm in the midst of getting hooked up in the tax lawyer community. Which has ties to the accounting community and is associated with corporate law where there is significant movement of individuals between lawyer and i-banker positions in NYC. I'm not an expert in finance but I think most of the above is on the mark.

Good luck. Contact me if you want to know a tax lawyer in NYC - I'm sure you will do well and I would like to know more up-and-coming i-bankers. My background before law school was CS and Russian, with *no* background in tax or accounting before law school, so it'd be fun to see a similar story unfold.
posted by lorrer at 4:24 PM on November 1, 2006

If you have any connections now is the time to use them. You've pretty much missed the campus recruiting window for the year. You should go ahead and put your resume in online for the various banks, but I wouldn't hold your breath. My impression of this sort of hiring is that it is very targeted at certain schools and they want people that realllly want to do it. If you do get an interview, I would bone up on the bank you are interviewing with and have a lot of reasons why you want to do finance.
The MBA route that mullacc outlined above is probably the way for you to go, if you still feel compelled in this direction.
posted by ch1x0r at 4:31 PM on November 1, 2006

Response by poster: My boyfriend decided at the beginning of this past summer, the summer before his senior year in college, he wanted to work in finance. He majored in psychology. He had no prior finance experience, even remotely, and things were complicated by his lower-than-average GPA (he actually had to leave school for a semester and study elsewhere, though he got good grades there and has kept his performance up here upon returning). As of last month he has an internship in our state's economic development office and as of yesterday, he has a job offer from an energy commodities group and is going to the second round of interviews with a real estate investment company. No high-powered Wall Street firms, but given his background (and how few seniors have job offers, despite their steady GPAs and sticking to their disciplines for four years), I am insanely proud of him. I can give you a brief overview of what he did, but if you want to talk to him email me. You are behind his schedule and have missed the bulk of campus recruitment, but it's hardly too late for you. Make sure you take some business classes before you graduate.

• This past summer he took finance/business-related classes and did well. Given his lack of job experience, showing excellent performance (and end-of-class projects) was crucial for his resume. He's taking more classes now and has all-but-completely abandoned the psychology major. It helps the economics major here is stupidly easy to acquire.
• He made connections with a professor here who has extensive experience in the area and now gives him advice and is willing to write a good recommendation.
• He spent craploads of time at the campus career center. This one is not-negotiable. God only knows how many hours he spent with every counselor there perfecting and revising his resume and squeezing out every last drop of advice they could offer, combing through their library about working in careers in finance and whatnot, and signing up for on-campus recruiting events.
• He went to every on-campus recruiting event remotely related to what he was interested in. He showed up in a suit with intelligent questions for the representatives and a portfolio full of copies of his resumes and reference sheets. He made an effort afterwards to go up and talk with the representatives individually. Ditto for attending the campus recruiting fair.
• He submitted to every online resume drop possible offered by the career center in companies related to finance fields.
• He prepared extensively for any time he was going to come in contact with a representative from companies he was interested in (interviews, recruiting events, etc).

I'm sure there was a lot more than that, but these are the things I remember. Like I said, email me for his contact info.
posted by Anonymous at 7:48 PM on November 1, 2006

The Vault Guides to careers in finance are pretty well regarded. I've refered to vault guides in my own field and have found them to be reliable.

I'm pretty sure I know which school you go to (sorry, I'm not trying to blow your cover) and if it's the one I think it is, then I'm very familiar with it. If you prefer your squirrels to be a certain color, feel free to email me (it's in my profile) and I'll give you as much school-specific information as I can. I just don't want to put professors' names and connections all over the internet. If the squirrel thing makes no sense, then I apologize for deducing incorrectly!
posted by chickletworks at 11:10 PM on November 1, 2006