Junior Finance major at UT with 3.5+ GPA. Currently interviewing with a bunch of banks, oil, and consulting companies. Need help trying to decide which company to end up working for and which career path in the three aforementioned industries is best. If anyone has experience in any of these fields please advise. All the companies I'm interviewing with are fortune 500 companies and in Houston (I refuse to leave Houston, Clutch City baby). Consulting- I hear if you can get in you will be set for life and is the best route but the work I am not exactly familiar with. I was wondering what entry level analysts do exactly in consulting. Energy finance- I love the stability you have in oil and the pay, but from all the positions I'm interviewing with they simply want finance guys to do accounting work for them. I HATE ACCOUNTING. This is the main part I need advice on, I wouldn't mind do book keeping for a couple years but I want to be involved in risk management and risk analysis. Does anyone know if you have the opportunity to do this after a couple years of b**** work. Banking-Honestly this is where my passion is, investment banking and managing portfolios. I refuse to go into this line of business because of the 100 hour weeks they work. I do not want to put myself through that so I was wondering what other options I can do in banking that makes decent money.
You probably heard this before but if you do ibanking for a couple years then get into private equity you will get the same pay but much less work. There is no way you can get into private equity without ibanking experience though so you should look at ibanking right now.
Consulting and i-banking are the two best paths to go down, but only if you can get in with the top firms. To be blunt, you will have an uphill battle with "only" a 3.5 GPA since you are at UT. If you were at Harvard or Stanford, that GPA would fly, but at UT it will be a stretch. Another path you should consider is energy trading. You can apply some of the same principles from your economics and finance classes to that, and it will be a hell of a lot more exciting than bookkeeping for 2 years. Plus a lot of those trading jobs are located in Houston.
See energy trading would be my dream job, but the select companies that specialize in energy trading aren't that large. The Chevrons, Shells, Exxons, etc. all of their financial analyst positions primarily consist of accounting work from what I'm seeing. Can you explain what companies do energy trading and what their day-to-day jobs consist of? I'm in the advanced rounds with JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, BBVA Compass, and Raymond James so I do have the opportunity to go IB, my gpa might be low but I more than make up for it in my extracurriculars, honors, and work experiences.
I'm not an expert on what the day-to-day is like for energy traders....but I believe Mateo on here is.
Energyy is the easiest to get into, but only do Product Control/Trade Control/Daily P&L, Risk, Scheduling (Marketing Company, NOT a pipeline UNLESS that's all you can get) or Optimization, Marketing, Origination or Trading. Settlements is monthly AR/AP/SAP hell garbage: that and the wrong pipeline scheduling gig, you could easily be in a place where a quarter to half of your co-workers have no degrees (or any of the prospects that would come with it). Contracts is tricky: a Contract Negotiator or Analyst job will have you drafting and interpreting contracts and you'd be alongside at least one or two JDs, whereas Contracts Administration or Accounts Opening are basically processing and filing jobs. Be wary of anything that says "Finance": which is actually splitting out the accounting/billing/tax guys from all the action, or has a long, tortured title with "Trade" in front. An entry level "Rotational" gig is good as long as you see commercial, scheduling, risk or trade control/daily P&L in the description. Be a little less picky with job titles when it's Power related, because that's such a different universe that it's always valuable to get in any way you can. But always Wholesale, never, ever Retail. You should also be willing to move anywhere in the country, especially to a smaller town/smaller shop; where you won't have a new crop of 21 year olds taking ALL the new marketing jobs and you'll actually interact with all the players in the transaction chain. http://intelligencepress.com/features/rankings/gas/ http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natu...cations/ngpipeline/MajorInterstatesTable.html Your CFA, CMA or part-time second Bachelors in Math starts today. Most of your precious Finance models can be taught to English majors from Rice on-the-job; and most of the real finance work is actually accounting.
What i read is Consulting - I don't know what this is Energy - I don't want to do something that may involve some kind of work that isn't what I want and I don't understand what real world accounting is I bank- I don't want to have to work long hours The sooner you learn that will will be a bit h over the next few years the better you will be off. Just accept it, take it in stride and work. You will be ok after that
You might want to consider business valuation, asset managers or some local boutique banks - Simmons & Co, Gulfstar Group, Sarofim & Co, Vaughan Nelson, DeBellas & Co - down here they might all be energy based - but again, look around to other cities [Google "(mid-sized city) investment bank"]. Probably want to invest in multipleBook of Lists.
