Sunday, June 15, 2008

One more question...

Another question:

What I would like to ask you is, how often you encounter people with no educational background in business/finance? Did you meet any career changers so far?

I think it is fairly common for non-business majors to end up in I-banking. Generally they are very smart people and learn the finance quickly after starting here. Actually most of my group did not study business in college, but they are all extremely bright and know a ton about how companies work.

The first associate I worked with out here used to be in consulting. He worked as a consultant for a major firm for a few years, then went to business school and wanted to switch to banking. It's really common for people to change careers from consulting to banking. I think it's generally harder for somebody like an accountant or engineer to switch over without doing an MBA, but I'm sure it happens.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the blog entries. It's really an amazing experience. Keep going and enjoy it!
Actually I also have a question concerning my study. I'll get to do a research project in finance later and have been thinking about a topic. Could you give me a direction to go if I want that research to be closer to what a financial analyst needs to know? I want to get more prepared for the job by doing my study. Thank you.

THE ANALYST said...

If you could research anything, I would probably pick something to do with valuation. Most of what you do is look at financial statements and derive value from them, so anything related to financial statements, valuation, or I guess even capital markets would be helpful.

Anonymous said...

Nice! I so appreciate your advice. By the way, I also took CFA weeks ago and hope that we both will pass. Thanks again.