I’m talking to a recruiter I know from high school about career goals and he suggested this role to me. I do Performance Reporting at a bank at the moment. I’m considering this to be a lateral move to a different firm. He sold it as a mix between accounting/risk/compliance where you interact directly with the traders. Do you see this being a good position to learn in? What do you think long term this would lead to? Would it look good to an adcom at B-School assuming it’s a well known bank? I’m going to go on the interviews (if I get them) but would like more information about it if anyone has experience in the area. Could it count toward CFA experience?
its accounting, dont do it.
People have gotten away with crazy things in making them count towards CFA work experience. This job should work
It could work for CFA experience but in most cases this could keep you in middle-office work. You “talk” to traders and do a lot of accounting and risk management stuff if that’s your thing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I have also advised a number of clients who do this in hopes that it will get them into a securities research role and for the average candidate, that transition does not happen. However, if you are very motivated then anything is possible, especially if you excel in that role and you’ve built up some good credibility among your colleagues.
This experience would also be meaningfully below the industry norm for an M7 sort of school if that’s your goal, simply because there are many folks from front office roles trying to get in. The role is definitely “below average” for top 5, maybe more acceptable for schools ranked on the back end.
Numi,
In my current role I am taking on a supervisory position leading a team of 6 people. Would that be meaningful experience for adcoms? I am concerned to stay in this part of the firm too long and be pidgeonholed. I do more project work now, but I’m finding that I’m not learning much anymore. If I do stay here I will probably apply to grad school early decision in the fall. My thought now is that if I can get into another well known firm but make more money it wouldn’t be bad. It would delay my application to school for another year or so. Would the extra year of experience and additional big firm name help my application? Is there benefit to this move beside money if this isn’t your ultimate goal?
That’s BS. These are good roles and very much feeders into a proper FO job…no it doesn’t happen overnight and in most cases has taken *gasp* years. I have many friends/former colleagues who’ve done it directly or into leadership/mgmt/rotational programs.
That said, the majority were to banking roles - the trading side seems more difficult a transition because the skillset is more specialized. Even then, I had a friend deadset on trading take one of these roles right out of school and shortly transitioned into a loan trading spot.
There was even a certain frog bank that pitched their marketing roles as a feeder into a trading seat if a certain amount of time was put in - they did this because they needed specialized derivatives knowledge and realized they couldn’t get that skillset without offering a transition into a seat.
As long as the job is better than you have now and it works towards your intended goal it seems like a good move imo.
EDIT: “trade support” is used very loosely…I’m assuming these are proper MO roles and not just glorified backoffice/operations.
Thanks Poulin. From my understanding this would be a role to mark complex products to market daily. For this reason it involves some of my past experience with performance, my accounting degree, adds in more valuation experience (cfa synergy) and has some concepts of risk/compliance. It was sold that it would give me more in depth exposure to products (something I don’t get in my current role). I was just really curious if anyone had experience with this because until I had this conversation I had never heard of it.
Your concerns about being pigeonholed are valid, but notwithstanding that it’s a good thing from an MBA admissions perspective that you’re leading a team. You have the right idea about making the most of this role and then re-visiting in the fall whether it makes sense to apply to business school. No point in working for another year if you already know you want to transition out of that role eventually.
I’m going to go ahead and totally disagree here.
product control people can work insane hours and get paid peanuts unless you make MD. They are not feeders into front office jobs.
So is this role a dead end? What would be a progression from it?