Ohkayy, thank you so much!

Yes.

Certificates do not help much for any deal advisory-based role. Bankers / advisers don’t take them seriously, and your time is better spent learning the actual skills required for the job. The CFA is the only certificate that means anything, and even that is marginally useful at best for IB roles.

Thanks for the response, Brian
In March, I had a potential opportunity working as transaction advisory position in Korea. I think I am getting close to what I want, such as dealing with the finance on infrastructures, building, and commercials. Do you think this is a good opportunity to enter in finance position for me instead of doing MBA? I think once I have experience in transaction advisory I may move to investment banking, consultant, or developer.

Also as transaction advisory position, would you please recommend what certificates required?

You will probably need an MBA to make this transition. Please do a search for the coverage of infrastructure and project finance on this site to get some ideas. The CFA won’t be too helpful here because it doesn’t give you access to recruiters and an alumni network. You’ll probably have the most luck targeting roles at large banks initially, gaining some experience there, and then considering buy-side (investing) roles in either equity or debt.

I am currently professional engineer in civil engineering with 5.5 years experience, and I want to change my career to infrastructure finance position, selling factories, buildings, plant, etc.

1. What career path can I expect to work on infrastructure finance position?

2. I was thinking to do MBA or get CFA certificate. Do you think either of plan is good for moving my career to infrastructure finance position?

They don’t really care about pre-university activities, so focus on getting into the best university you can and then completing internships early (in your first year or the summer after). There is not much to do until then unless you want to start learning about accounting, finance, Excel, etc.

If you’re in your last year already, you don’t have many options because finance recruiting starts so early. I would recommend looking at the articles on Last-Minute Recruiting, Lateral Hires, and Master’s in Finance programs on this site (do a search) to get some ideas. Also, if you’re in India, you should probably move elsewhere because the Indian IB market is incredibly difficult, and your chances are low unless you’ve gone to one of the top IIMs.

If you grew your own business by 10x, you’re currently a senior engineer, and you’re also a part-time COO, bankers will seriously question your motivation for going into banking and taking a pay cut just so you can work 80 hours per week on fixing PowerPoint slides. So I don’t think you have a good plan, I don’t think someone at your seniority level should ever go into IB, and unless you have an amazing reason for making this change, I think bankers will be quite skeptical of your plans.

You could theoretically do an MBA to get in, but, again, I’m not sure why you’d ever want to enter the industry at your experience level.