Banking is Back Blog

Banking After An MBA: A Brief List of Benefits

toigobib — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:35:44 +0000

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

An Introduction

toigobib — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:32:29 +0000

First, I congratulate you on taking (or at least exploring) the next step in your career and journey for greater fulfillment. The MBA is much more than a degree. It is an experience. It is a training ground for aspiring leaders where iron sharpens iron. The MBA is a door through which those who are interested in successful careers may enter. Perhaps the greatest part of the MBA experience is the opportunity to forge relationships with a wide-range of professionals and organizations such as the Robert Toigo Foundation. Actually, Toigo holds a special place with me because of the role the foundation played in my admission to business school and now in my pursuit of a career in finance. I will speak to that later, but suffice it to say that Toigo is an extraordinary organization built upon extraordinary leaders who exhibit nothing but sheer excellence.

I currently attend the Yale School of Management where I focus on finance. Like Allen, I also come from what may be considered a “non-traditional” background. My undergraduate and graduate training focused on the information technology space. My five-year career focused on information technology and operations roles across the healthcare, insurance and telecommunications industries. I thoroughly enjoyed my roles and chose pursue my passion for finance by attending business school. Given the fact that I had not worked in finance, I found the MBA to be a perfect complement to the strong leadership and analytical skills I developed through my various roles.

Personally, I believe that there could not be a better time to pursue a career in financial services. This summer, I will intern in the investment banking division of a bulge bracket firm. Honestly, I must say that the current environment is competitive, particularly for career changers, but there are plenty of opportunities for those who are willing to put in the work. Being a career changer myself, I will share my tips and best practices through this blog. Stay tuned!

Regards,

Corey L. Harrison
Yale School of Management
MBA Candidate, Class of 2011

The Right Side of 20/20 Hindsight

toigobib — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:20:45 +0000

An MBA is a fantastic way to launch a career in banking — whatever the flavor. Whether you choose to pursue a career track in equity research, investment banking, private banking, or sales and trading, there is nothing like having a far-reaching alumni-base through which to come up to speed on best practices and a set of likeminded, supportive classmates with whom to scale the (usually rather intense) recruiting processes. Add on access to the resources of a high caliber fellowship like Toigo, and a banking industry hopeful has some of the best chances at creating a lasting career that will be full of accomplishment and advancement.

My "story" is not unlike many of the traditional MBA-level banking entrants in some ways, but varies significantly in others. I chose to attend the MIT Sloan School of Management, a program I believed would (and successfully did) position me well given my interests and expectations, and I had a plan to pursue investment banking almost exclusively as summer internship recruiting began to heat up (I will touch upon why in a future blog entry). My prior academic training is in mechanical engineering and computer science and I was without any formal training in accounting or finance when I entered b-school. So like many MBA banking industry hopefuls, I was attempting to take my knowledge and thought ability from one area and apply them to another. However, unlike the typical MBA investment banking recruit, I had spent nearly six years working in various flavors of finance, including a year in investment banking as a senior analyst.

The choice to pursue investment banking — or any flavor of banking, for that matter — is one of those things in an MBA student’s career that you learn needs to be thought through and acted upon very quickly to avoid "missing the boat." Having a fairly diverse set of pre-MBA finance industry experiences (within financial strategy, equity research, and investment banking), I can concretely say that pursuing an MBA has been one of the best choices I could have made in considering a longer-term career in banking. In my case, there is a level of sophistication in analysis and sheer confidence in thought and action (among a plethora of additional benefits) that I would not have been able to achieve without gaining the opportunity to sit in classes among some of the most talented and ambitious people in the world or to associate with an organization like Toigo. A top MBA program and its environmental accoutrements, such as access to Toigo, act collectively as a laboratory that works to meld prior experiences and ambition (…and I am sure there’s a case to be made for several other "major" inputs) into an informed, action-oriented package with a significantly widened set of opportunities. …and as a person who almost chose to never "go back" to get an MBA given my relatively long pre-MBA tenure in finance, I can attest to the satisfaction of being on the right side of 20/20 hindsight.

Next Up:

* Banking as a post-MBA career path

Next-Next Up:

* Toigo’s role in my MBA experience

Allen T. Lamb | MIT Sloan School of Management | MBA Class of 2010