Numi, great to hear you are looking at hedge funds. I am interested in learning how you arrived at your decision to pursue opportunities at hedge funds vs. corporate strategy where I thought you were headed post MBA. With a top MBA, you can essentially do anything you choose so I am intrigued with respect to the decision making process. Now for the question that KarateBoy really wanted to ask you: is MBA > CFA?
thommo77, in my case I went through the recruiting process for strategy consulting and corporate strategy. There are a lot of different aspects of business that I’m curious about, and I came to business school with the hopes of finding something that I liked more than finance. I spent most of first term sitting in on company presentations and lunch-and-learns across a variety of different functions/industries hoping to find a field I was more interested in, and consulting and corporate strategy came to the forefront. I only realized after going through the entire recruiting process the things I liked / didn’t like about each field, which for me are as follows: Consulting - enjoy the idea of helping to solve complex business issues, and working with a broad range of clients and with talented and intellectually curious people. However, I realized that I don’t like to travel for work, the work life balance is pretty bad, I’d be taking a pay cut going from private equity to consulting but also pursuing a lifestyle that was less desirable to me, and there was too much client-interfacing for my liking. I don’t have that much of an issue with client services, but iwth consulting, a lot of the job is about serving as a trusted advisor to clients but seldom being with a client long enough to see whether your recommendations are implemented. Seemed way too fluffy for me. Corporate strategy - a very fun job on the whole because I do like the high-level work. However, I learned through the recruitment process that it’s tough to be a lifetime “strategist” – most people who aspire to get into senior manager or C-level roles end up having to go into a function more impactful to the P&L like marketing, sales, operations, etc. Since I saw myself as more of an investor than a line manager or whatever, I didn’t feel like there was a very well-defined pathway to senior ranks through strategy. Basically, I like the idea of working and growing within a company and trying to solve high-level strategy issues, but I’m simply not as passionate about actually running a business, working for a huge corporation, and managing a staff the way that some people are. I think I’m too entrepreneurial and fascinated by investing to be a good fit for these roles, at least in the long-term. At the end of the day, I realized I wasn’t getting any younger and became increasingly accepting of the real possibility that I might not find something in the workplace that I was truly passionate about. But sometimes it’s OK not to love something, but as long as you like it enough, it can be worth it. I felt that of all the fields I looked into, finance was the best fit both with respect to my personality, background, what what I really enjoy doing. Ultimately, I don’t want to go back to the sell-side, and I’m interested in investing in the public market and also being in the public markets. I’ve thought about going back to private equity, but probably won’t because I feel like there is too much “deal risk,” i.e. spending lots of time on a deal that ends up falling apart for whatever reason, or the risk of making a bad investment and having to stick with it for 5-7 years because that’s just how private equity works. So, that was the reason that prompted me to look into hedge funds, which is what I’m looking for right now in terms of summer internships. Sorry about the long response but hopefully that helps - as you can see I’ve been thinking about it a ton recently because I’m debating whether I should accept one of the offers I have, or take a chance and letting them all expire in a week in hopes of searching for an interesting buy-side internship. I’m leaning towards the latter, but it’s a tough call and a bold move.
Thanks Numi - great insights and thanks for sharing. It sounds like you have thought things through and I wish you luck in your hedge fund search. I know bromion works for a long-short hedge fund (I believe in San Fran) so may pay to drop him an email.
Trick question; The answer is CPA. thommo77 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Numi, great to hear you are looking at hedge > funds. I am interested in learning how you > arrived at your decision to pursue opportunities > at hedge funds vs. corporate strategy where I > thought you were headed post MBA. With a top MBA, > you can essentially do anything you choose so I am > intrigued with respect to the decision making > process. > > Now for the question that KarateBoy really wanted > to ask you: is MBA > CFA?
Numi, Insightful post as always. I found point number 3 to be particularly interesting. As an public equities analyst, this is a point that I have sometimes struggled with myself. Can you maybe elaborate on this point? In particular, how to ask and the type of questions that you consider insightful when quizzing managing teams. As someone who has not had the benefit of working in PE, I am curious to know… Thanks. Numi wrote: "(3) Learn how to speak with management teams and ask questions that give you useful insights. This will be hard to do on your own and especially if your boss isn’t good at leading meaningful discussions with management teams. My senior analyst in sell-side research wasn’t particularly good at it – he took a “boil the ocean” approach so we’d have these 45-60 minute calls with management/IR which just made me want to gouge my eyes out. But somewhere within that call we’d get a useful nugget of information. Still, this isn’t how you want to spend your time. I only figured out how to ask informative questions of mgmt teams when I worked in PE, but I think it is a skill that hedge funds value at least from what I can tell as I’m going through MBA internship recruiting now. "
Numi, what offers do you have on the table? Did they all come to you at your school? Sounds like a sweet spot to be in.
Numi, thanks again for the words of wisdom. Good luck deciding on what to do this summer!!
yipikiyay - a lot of times, senior management teams have something prepared for the most common types of IR questions. They’re in the business of tackling hard questions from investors so that you feel comfortable investing in it. But there are a few ways you can get around it – a lot of it comes from developing the soft skills needed to build a rapport / relationship with someone, and other parts of it comes from your ability to apply mosaic theory. So, for example, if you were skeptical about a certain new product line taking out, the “typical” question would be to ask management what type of revenue contribution they’re expecting for the year. That’s nothing that will catch them off-guard. But you can try to figure out whether or not those revenue expectations are realistic by asking them stuff like how the company is incentivizing their sales force to sell the product, what their channel strategies are, what internal measures they’re taking if those sales goals don’t materialize, etc…these are all questions that will enable you to get a sense as to whether management is being for real or if they’re just pulling your leg. sjv1030 and Muddahudda - thanks for the well wishes. The pending offers I have are for internal strategy at some Fortune 100 companies, and then also in the corporate finance practice of a major strategy consulting firm. They’re all pretty appealing offers but I think my main long-term interest is in investing, so I feel like I should do something for the summer that positions me best for my long-term goal. I understand there is some risk associated with turning down four job offers and essentially being “offer-less” again, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I feel like the probability of my being completely unemployed for the summer is pretty low. thommo77 – thanks for the recommendation. I’ll drop bromion an e-mail and see what type of wisdom he can offer on the HF recruiting process.
Does anyone have any idea what is a high readership number for a good analyst at a BB firm? The few top ranked analyst in my firm-including a few axes in their respective space- get a bit over 2000+hits per month.
How do you get readership numbers?
Firms with more resources (think large US banks) will often have the ability to see exactly how many or who opens your publication when it is sent out to clients.