As like many of you, I intend to move to equity research/IB. And as many of you have found out, I too realize it is very difficult. My background. Electronics Engg, Software techie for 6 yrs now, cleared my CFA level 2. I am from Mumbai. India 
Now, I intend to give a big push to my search for a job hunt. On this front I have already been talking to few people in the industry and forwarded my resume. And of course I realize that it’s not enough. I want to start networking, attending fairs and cold calling. However i need to know HOW. Where do i start? How do i find out whom to cold call. As i understand, the industry is all about contacts - who you know. I want to reach out to as many ppl in the industry and push my case. That’s the only chance i got for an interview. If anyone had any experience in pushing their case, please let me know. It will be really helpful to know. Appreciate your inputs.
If you have no work experience and you’re not from a top school (which is most of us who’ve found ourselves in this situation), I highly recommend taking any job which will give you some financial statement analysis experience for a year or two, then breaking into ER. For IB you might need 2-4 years exp and a good MS / MA degree since they tend to hire directly out of schools and it appears you’ve missed this round of IB recruiting from undergrad.
Net work like a desperate h00ker
State-run M&A is pretty big in India, you know what to do.
I thought you are talking about Usher’s new song
i dont think you will be able to move given your background.
pupdawg82 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I thought you are talking about Usher’s new song Pow Pow Pow.
baby let me love you doooooowwnnnnn. There’s so many ways to luuuv ya. Brazilians LOVE that song FYI.
Go get an MBA from a decent school. Enuff said.
aquabu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As like many of you, I intend to move to equity > research/IB. And as many of you have found out, I > too realize it is very difficult. > > My background. Electronics Engg, Software techie > for 6 yrs now, cleared my CFA level 2. > I am from Mumbai. India > chances are slim. It’s very competitive now even among people with good finance experience.
What makes you think that finance will be better than your current job?
I also have graduation in Electronics Engineering and I am in India too, I can understand your situation very well. I also had lot of problem shifting into finance, but I shifted quite early. I worked in analytics for just 4 months after college and got a Quant job in a HF. This is usually the best route for engineers, work in analytics for some time, add econometrics, VBA & SQL to your resume, clear CFA L1 and get a quant job. But problem with you is your experience. 6 years means a lot of experience and noone would hire you for entry level job. So your situation is basically a conundrum, only solution is MBA. Even, you won’t like to work in entry level job now, so get an MBA. With an MBA, you will have many many options with this experience. In general, getting a job in Indian ER or IB is very difficult, because these jobs are so less and people competing for these jobs are so many (general problem in India). On top of that ER/IB people are traditional to the core, they just don’t hire anyone without MBA. If you are keen, then here are some realities about finance world in India. 1) Indian ER: Top brokerage houses and Investment banks recruit only from IIM and other tier 1 MBA colleges and sometimes from tier 2 MBA colleges. It is easiest to break into ER after MBA as compared with IB or PE, but competition is huge here. Nearly everyone who’s working in US/UK/EU KPO wants to switch to Indian markets, including people with many years of ER back office exp. 3) US/UK/Europe IB/ER/PE (Front End), State run M&A, Indian IB/PE: freshers they recruit are only from IIM. (ENAM and JP Morgan India pays more then USD 250,000 (including bonus) to fresh IIMA and IIMC grads, so you can guess that competition is really cut throat here.) 3) US/UK/Europe KPO: These people are very good people, open to everyone and these people provide employment to most of MBAs and non MBAs too :). CFA definitely helps here. You can try to get a Quant job or structured finance role, they can hire you directly for associate level, but position doesn’t matter much since it’s a back office lol. But they’ll fit you in some place where your IT skills will come to use, so you can expect something like quantitative developer profile. They can hire you for ER, try Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan KPO, it’s a revolving door, you can get in JP Morgan KPO with CFA L1 or L2. But, the problem here is that, they prefer people from IIT and nearly everyone from IIT (without MBA) wants to switch into finance now, so if you are not from IIT or other top engineering college, you will be at disadvantage. The whole point is that, without MBA you can only go to a KPO. This is not US, this is India, things works a lot differently here then US. People prefer traditions here. So just prepare for MBA rather then CFA, 6 years means very strong experience for Indian B-School application, you can easily get into Tier 1 MBA if you do good in Entrance test. Don’t screw up your career by switching into entry level KPO job. Focus yourself on MBA entrance exam, that’s my honest advice. You are investing 300+ hours in CFA, but you can nail the entrance test with 300+ hours of preparation and get into Tier 1 MBA (if not IIM). So CFA is really not maximizing the utility of your efforts at this point in your life.
Thank you guys for your sincere advice. @dOpa. Thanks for the detailed input. Really helped me understand a lot more of what is happening. I will ponder over all the inputs and also weigh in my passion to find out what I should do. But you c, I am really determined to get into ER/IB. I know i can make it and i want it desperately. So i am going to give it my best shot with a good plan of action. Thanks again.
d0pa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > (ENAM and JP Morgan India pays more then USD > 250,000 (including bonus) to fresh IIMA and IIMC > grads, so you can guess that competition is really > cut throat here.) [citation needed] There’s no way this is correct.
@aquabu: I appreciate your interest, and I think you can make a very good career in finance with such solid experience in Engineering. MBA will open doors to ER/IB/PE for you. You will easily get into ER/IB/PE with your experience. You should talk to experienced people in Indian finance industry, they will provide you with more inputs. But, IMO the best move in your career right now is MBA. You can pursue CFA after/alongwith MBA. CFA alone might work in US, but it’s worthless here without MBA. You know it’s India, people are so damn traditional (in fact bureaucratic) here. I hope you find solution to your queries soon. Best of luck!
justin88 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > d0pa Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > (ENAM and JP Morgan India pays more then USD > > 250,000 (including bonus) to fresh IIMA and > IIMC > > grads, so you can guess that competition is > really > > cut throat here.) > > > > There’s no way this is correct. Why? Top Indian colleges might not rank in top univ rankings in world, but they are very good at placing their students at very high paying positions in finance. Indian I bank’s salaries are not highest salaries that’s why they are not reported in newspapers, also more then 50% of their package is bonus. See these links: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Deutsche_offers_Rs144_Crore_at_IIMA_placements_-nid-65642.html 1.44 crore Indian rupees = 312 292.8 U.S. dollars http://www.indiaedunews.net/IIM/IIM_Calcutta_graduate_gets_1.6_crore_package_10902/ 1.6 crore Indian rupees = 346 992 U.S. dollars These are highest salaries, but average salaries in finance from these colleges are awesome too. Their average salaries take a hit because salaries are generally pathetic in all areas except finance. But if you want finance, it’s awesome, specially when this education is coming for total expense of just USD 30-40k (Thanks to heavy govt. subsidy).
So, you’re in it for the money too? The one kid out of the 1000’s who is actually in it for the opportunity to learn and opportuinty to influence a companys strategic path will get the job 8or9 times/10.
But of course those are outliers and look to be for international positions.
So, not that I particularly want to be in this sort of discussion, but taking the top few starting salaries from some university as anything nearly representative of the overall sample is like saying Zuckerberg is a billionaire and therefore, every person who goes to Harvard will be worth the same.
I brought up IIMC’s Final Placement Report for batch 2008-10 (this year?). The average domestic package was 15 lakh, which included 36% finance offers. Finance couldn’t be that outlandish, otherwise the rest of the grads would get very little.