The article was extremely informative, thank you so much! I do have the age old question: how do I go about cracking ER? Ofcourse, depends on several variables, listed below-
1. Education: BS Finance, Diploma in Financial Mgmt, MS Finance (in a Russell Group uni in the UK), CFA L1 candidate (thorough with the portion, just waiting on my exam date really)
2. Work Experience: Currently a Financial Data Analyst at a worldwide top financial services firm. (for reference – this has nothing to do with deals, M&A, equity research in the slightest unfortunately)
3. Grades: Masters – 2:1 (1% off distinction)
4. Networking: Unfortunately very limited, barely anything really. Primarily because I’m not very sure as to who do I reach out to in the first place?

Further, does the CFA really boost your ER application to new levels?

Thank you so so much for this article. Very grateful in advance for answering my long question! :)

You could do any of those, but if your goal is to become a CFO, the corporate finance option is the most relevant. Strategy and corp dev are maybe “more interesting” but do not lead to CFO roles in most cases. And Treasury is usually a part of corporate finance. Investor relations is more relevant if you want to do fundraising or related roles.

You could do that, but I’m not sure why you need ER first if you want to do consulting and then PE/VC. It seems like you could just do consulting first and get into one of those (VC is much more likely than PE, at least if you’re in the US).

I would recommend looking at the VC career path article on this site because there are many different routes into the industry, and you don’t necessarily need IB or consulting experience first. It helps, but people can also get there via startups, product management sales/biz dev, etc.

I am a sophomore in college and want to break into Venture Capital one day. I am certainly a hard worker, but I feel like the lifestyle of an investment banker takes hard work to an extreme. I am a health conscious person and I want to prioritize that, which I feel like I can not do in IB. If I were to start out in equity research, I think I would develop strong valuation skills. However, I know I would lack the deal experience to pivot into PE or VC. Could I do equity research, then management consulting, then pivot into PE or VC? Or would you switch those two around? Do you have other ideas? For me, I don’t necessarily have a short timeline where I want/need to work in PE or VC in 2-3 years. I know that it might take me longer without the IB background, and I am perfectly fine with that. With that said, do you have any advice?

Yes, it gets more difficult. They’re not going to hire someone with 8 years of full-time experience for an entry-level IB role. Other fields are a bit more flexible, but you still generally need to move quickly because it becomes more difficult to switch over time.

Hey Brian – could you elaborate on what you mean by too much experience? Is it more difficult to start a career in ER/IB/HF/AM as one gets older (I’m 30).

It’s a significant discount to IB. Compensation doesn’t really change much in the span of 2-3 years if that is your question, so the ranges here still apply. Most HF recruiting is off-cycle, meaning you need to do the legwork and outreach yourself rather than relying on headhunters. Headhunters may contacts some ER professionals for certain roles, but it’s not the same process as the IB –> PE recruitment pipeline.

There is some overlap between certain desks, but S&T is very different in most cases because it’s responsible for executing trades and selling/distributing products to clients. There’s overlap in the sense that you may do “research” in both ER and S&T, but the purpose is quite different because in ER, it used to be to encourage S&T clients to trade, and now it’s produced so that banks can charge clients directly for the research. Distressed debt is probably the area where S&T is closest to ER, but even there, it’s different because you do not trade or sell anything in ER. And there is no distressed debt ER group – maybe there’s a credit or fixed income research group that covers distressed debt.