Please help. Need advice to unf**k my career

Water Cooler Careers
#1

Hi all,

I’m looking for any advice on how to break into FP&A roles. I started my career doing engineering and project management within infrastructure and utilities space for 5 years. My undergrad was in civil engineering (non-target state univ) and got my hacksaw MBA from USC.

I did one BB FO corp banking internship, which did not work out so I didn’t get a return offer (another long story).

Just my luck (and probably due to my unorthodox background), I only managed to land an internal strategy role at a utility company. I did receive interviews from big4 and mbb, but did not land anything.

My current role involves some business/operations process improvements, some IT project management, some finance (eg: capital budgeting for our assets and sometimes off-balance sheet / project finance modeling) and some data analytics.

Basically jack of all trades master of none, and at this point I realized my resume is probably very f**k’d up. I do learn a lot because of the variety of the work and exposures to a ton of people in the organization, and it’s a very stable job, but I don’t have any specialization and makes me look unfocused… Also, I don’t see myself doing this forever.

Back in B-school, I turned down a FDLP FP&A internship at F500 for the BB internship (which did not work out, sadly), so now I was thinking maybe I should try FP&A because the path is more defined.

Can anyone give some advice on what strategies I need in order to break into FP&A? Is this even realistic given I’ve been out of school for almost 2 years (since Aug 2016)? Honestly, I don’t mind taking a paycut at this point and don’t mind taking a demotion to just entry-level analyst to get my career paths straighten up.

I’ve tried to network within the company and let’s just say that avenue is totally closed…

Can anyone anyone give some ideas to unfcuk my career? Thanks so much…

#2

You’re fvcked kid. F p and a is only reserved for the wolfs

#3

I like stories. I want to know what happened at the BB and your current company.

#4

Dad died so I had to drop out of the summer internship a week before it ends, so I didn’t complete it and they wouldn’t give me an offer.

#5

USC MBA ain’t that bad, maybe reach out to some alumni and play all the roles you’ve had in the past to your advantage.

#6

Sorry to hear that.

Why do you say that networking at the current company is not an option?

#7

I didn’t know there was such thing as a “FO corporate banking internship”. But anyway, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to get an FP&A job somewhere. It’s not like investment banking where it’s over if you miss your initial shot at recruitment. I think you just have to network creatively and wait for the right opportunity to come up/