Great place to learn and grow exit opportunities > Hedge Funds etc in my case, Smart people but very cut through sometimes too. Nevertheless I can call myself a lucky person as managed to land my role pretty easily within the FO although:
My background by any means wasn’t an obvious choice for FO as former generic Firmops so OP experience, never involved in pitching before, not like most colleagues coming firm Risk or Finance etc
I’m unique as I didn’t have any expensive target Ivy(US)/Russel Group(UK) diploma – in fact I have graduated mediocre accounting major in one of Easter European Unis, not even the most competitive major to start with, so it isn’t true that only those break in, it is possible even in FO!
I’m not qualified – neither FCA, FRM, ACCA etc, in fact Analyst I managed tend to be more technical as far my operation 15YeO goes.
I did one of the budget friendliest(budget limits and language barrier) non-target London’s MBA – costed £16k ca. when most of my colleagues have LSE(costed £110-140£k eMBA) etc in comparison, due to problems with communication I was also forced to use help copywriters to achieve my final result.
My communication skills although average as I have never studied English language as my 1st foreign language, nor my Eastern accent luckily hasn’t impacted my chances. Know sectors at FS are very biased on this in London as well as expat nationalities(policies one thing, reality another)
I was lucky as HR hasn’t screened the reasons why I’ve got a golden bullet, was redundant at another budget bank in 2015 prior to the last bank, focusing on my last only employer instead and my latest recommendation instead. Lucky this hasn’t impacted my onboarding and screening!
Finally, if I were a men probably I wouldn’t fit so well to HRs diversity targets(GS it is no surprise aims as per Financial Times and others to increase% women in FO). Fantastic 20% salary bump over Morgan.
Overall I’m very grateful and happy that I can lead my own team and set own targets as well recruit people suitable for business and my management’s own personal goals. Salary bump over Morgan, I’m keep telling friends that in this business there is no space for too old, experienced candidates as they tend to create leaderships challenges and raising questions about operational sense and ways of doing things .I personally recruit only young candidates, who are willing to make extra effort, work long hours and do not challenge supervisors.