Banking After An MBA: A Brief List of Benefits
The best way for me to speak on banking as a post-MBA career path is to leverage what I have extracted from my own professional experiences (…however limited those experiences are in the grand scheme of things). Among the flavors of banking this blog speaks to — equity research, investment banking, private banking, and sales and trading — I have directly worked in two of the four: equity research and investment banking. Although there are some key differences between the two functions when considering which professional skill sets are honed and the metrics for success within each, there are definitely many commonalities when it comes to “bigger picture” benefits. I would only imagine that private banking and sales and trading also share in these.
I have three points to touch upon to address pursuing one of the flavors of banking as a post- MBA career path: (1.) Access, Access, Access (2.) Light-Speed Personal Growth, and (3.) Visible Excellence
A C C E S S , A C C E S S , A C C E S S
There are few professions where after graduating from business school you can almost immediately begin interacting with the senior executives of some of the largest corporations, the most influential institutional investors, or the wealthiest individuals in the world. With so much of the profession relying on relationship building, the direct and wide-reaching access banking consistently provides is sure to be a huge professional asset, whether your “end-game” is to pursue a senior banking role or otherwise.
L I G H T – S P E E D P E R S O N A L G R O W T H
I did not fully realize just how much I had learned within my pre-MBA time in banking (about three years worth) until I began engaging assignments and team discussions in business school. I found I was conversant in a wide assortment of industry dynamics, and was also able to quickly pull together disparate points of information for the purpose of communicating a coherent story. I largely attribute these skills to my exposure in banking. While it may be the extraordinary position in most companies that asks a professional to become quickly educated on unfamiliar matters or to consistently “connect the dots,” it is very much the expectation within banking. You are bound to find yourself frequently challenged in ways that force you to grow faster in knowledge and skill than perhaps you thought you could.
V I S I B L E E X C E L L E N C E
It is unlikely that many banking firms – bulge, boutique, or middle-market — recruit MBA students with the expectation that most will still be engaged in the same line of work, or even with their firm, a decade later. They do expect, however, that you enter the field committed to a lifestyle of delivering extraordinary excellence under what can sometimes be described as extraordinary pressures. In the end, it is all in the spirit of being client focused and assisting clients to win at whatever financial choices, whether daily or once-in-a-lifetime, they are facing. Banking is the platform upon which your success with clients is visible beyond what many professions offer (…with the caveat, of course, that failure has the same physics).
This is a brief list of the overarching benefits to a post-MBA career in banking, but I think the included points are well suited for comparing your prior professional experience(s) to a potential career in banking as an MBA graduate. Hopefully the list at least provides you with some food for thought.
Next-Up:
* Toigo’s role in my MBA experience
Allen T. Lamb | MIT Sloan School of Management | MBA Class of 2010
