Jump ship to WM or hope for something in asset mgmt?

Water Cooler Careers
#1

Hi. I am currently an analyst (4 years since graduation with BA in math, 2 years at current company) in an investment operations position, mostly performance measurement and analytics and data strategies.

I have an offer on hand to join a wealth management firm with a heavy emphasis on tech, or wait and see if I get to the next round of interviews for a product management analyst position with sales.

Pay is probably similar, “work-hard-play-hard” vibe for both, the current firm is a much larger and established firm, so the risk averse side in me says to stay, but another risk aver side in me says to take the WM offer rather than taking a chance on making it through the interview for the product management position.

Both can be interesting. The WM position is more aligned to what I may want to do in the future.

What kind of questions would you ask yourself before declining an offer on hand to pursue a shot at getting an offer for a different position?

Also, driving much of this decision is that I really don’t like my current position. Either option would be a step up from what I’m doing right now.

#2

This is really hard to answer without knowing more about the “tech” part of the other gig. FinTech is such a huge category, you could be talking about building client reporting tools to robo to OCIO and on and on.

I guess if you feel the WM firm is offering something really unique and interesting, take it. Just be warned that pretty much all decent FinTechs eventually get bought by Fidelity, BlackRock, or Envestnet. If this WM firm is too good at what they offer, you may be out of a job when they’re acquired for their tech and not their people.