Where did some of you guys get your start in finance? im looking for companies with entry level positions to get some experience
Finance has so many different implications for so many different people, it's important to figure out what what area you want to go into.
There's "front office" work. Most highly paid, most coveted and hardest to land.
Includes investment banking. This (on an analyst level) is doing the number crunching and making models trying to determine cash flows and valuations for different companies, often for IPOs and M&A deals.
Includes trading. This is investing, on behalf of the bank or other clients, into a variety of financial instruments, often very complex ones. Forwards, swaps, cmos, other derivatives.
Includes research. Investment analysis, etc. This may fall into middle office work in some places, but I'm considering research analysts at places like Cornerstone, Bridgewater, etc.
Also includes associate work at hedge funds, private equity firms and wealth management firms.
There's "middle office" work.
This includes risk management, corporate finance, compliance, etc. These are generally huge departments in any bank.
There's also "back office" work.
Traditional Ops and Technology. They're the ones who keep the wheels spinning.
It's possible to do quite well in any of them. Front office work is hard to come by without connections, tremendous experience, drive, a school with "pedigree", luck and a hell of a lot of work. Frankly, I think the 100+ hour weeks of slave-like work wasn't worth it for whatever sums of money.
Financially, it's not impossible to start off in the ~70k mark in a place like NYC in middle and back office roles. Many start in the 50k zone, though. In terms of long term prospects, you can expect ~200-250k in the director level zone later in your career in the middle/back office roles if you work your ass off and are handy.
Many of these institutional roles are quite dated and if you are resourceful and really good with excel, you can automate away much of your role and make your life quite easy. You may make part of your department disposable, sure... but if a job can be automated away with an excel macro, it probably shouldn't be a job.
Speaking as a current software engineer, I can say my goal is
always to make myself disposable. There's always other things out there to automate. If I can leave the company and have noone blink an eye, I've done my job well.
My history: Currently 24, graduated ~2 years ago from a very good school in math/physics. I did well in college, but not summa or magna well.
Various clubs in college, no leadership club positions.
One volunteer position at a design company doing random tasks between my freshman & sophomore year.
Minimum wage internship doing IT support between sophomore & junior year.
Pretty well paid internship doing traditional middle/back office work at a bank between junior and senior year. Got a return offer for 70k.
Spent a lot of time my junior & senior year doing more traditional software engineering work. Read a ton of books learning on my own. Lots of interviewing prep books.
I ended up applying to close to 100 jobs my senior year, got like 5 offers or so. Took one at a mid sized startup in the finance industry, make somewhere between 100-150k now as a software engineer there now.
For someone in your position, I would try to position yourself somehow to get into a middle office role. Throw a ton of darts at the board. Apply everywhere. Try to get a relevant internship during the year now. You're a little late to the game, but you can position yourself to be in a good place a year or two from now. Get really good at excel, it's pretty much an expected and vital skill in most analyst level positions these days.
