Background about me: I work in credit at a F500 company and help with Corp. Dev. Due to our market share and maturity of the company, acquisitions are not frequent enough for the company to hire full-time corporate development analysts. I’m paid fairly well for my area- I don’t get paid as much as some people on here, but my yearly expenses represent 19% of my salary. I get great benefits, and there is a lot of opportunity for growth. Basically, I like my company but I don’t like corporate finance. Most people appear to have no drive and the work is mundane. I spend my time helping other people with their work so I can keep myself busy. I need something that’s going to challenge me to use my brain more.
I was asked to interview for a leveraged finance position at a BB but have never really considered doing it. What is a typical day like, and what are the typical exit opportunities?
It’s one of the most attractive groups at an IB as many of your clients are PE sponsors. Go for it or jump to another corporate dev role where deals are more active. Hours are horrible doe.
Basically doing a ton of documentation edits and other b*tchwork at junior level. Then it becomes essentially sales if you stay long enough. Anyway, if you are young and don’t have anything else to do, it will be a big upgrade in terms of prestige and compensation. You will have more opportunities later, including going back to corporate finance presumably. Culture in the past sucked, but firms nowadays claim to be getting better, which makes sense, since mistreated juniors now will leave for more appealing industries, unlike before.
Complete BS. HR reached out to me for an interview for a leveraged finance analyst position, but then they proceed to try and interview me for a position I didn’t even apply for.
I had my first interview today with HR. They originally reached out to me for a “credit analyst - leveraged finance” position. The duties were: perform financial statement analysis and financial modeling for corporate loan transactions, assess earnings quality and sustainability, debt capacity, asset/liability mix, appropriateness of capital structure and quality of financial management, construct and update financial models and perform financial sensitivity analyses, assess enterprise valuation using relevant methodologies including discounted cash flow and market comparable studies.
During the interview, the recruiter said this position is for a “Credit Risk Analyst - Financial Institutions.” I thought this was odd because it was a completely different position than what we originally discussed… I asked the recruiter to discuss the duties for the position because the name change for the position was a bit suspicious to me. When the recruiter told me the duties, I realized the duties were completely different than the job they first told me about. It wasn’t what I agreed to interview for. I asked the recruiter, “Why are these duties different and what happened to the job I agreed to interview for?” The recruiter responded, “oh, that position was filled. Are you interested in this one?” I blatantly said, “No,” thanked her for the consideration, wished her the best of luck in her search, and hung up the phone. I was pissed.
She was an internal recruiter. I thought people at BBs wouldn’t pull a stunt like this, but I guess I was wrong. I’m considering not dealing with this company again.
Don’t let an idiot ruin your day…most recruiters internal or external are idiots (most can’t even tell the responsibilities between different roles). They could have something opening up later if you maintain the relationship.