不要放弃！FAS -> Laid off -> Product Manager Offer

大家好，自从我大四以来，我一直在这个论坛上工作了3 - 4年，当时我发现WSO。I have absorbed a lot from this forum, about the financial services industry, and financial thinking in general.

Too long to read: Don't give up on your job search !

大学本科：

非目标本科生，前40名。该机构没有财务专业的专业，但仍未确定。我研究了数学和经济学。双专业造成了一些伤害我的GPA。我在高三的寒假期间发现了金融业。到那时，我知道我很少知道，因为我知道这么少，所以我去参加银行的全职招聘可能为时已晚。
After graduation, I managed to secure an internship at a very small buysideM&Aadvisory shop. The work was super tedious. I was only doing very basic qualitative research: googling and compiling very vague data into2ManBetX登陆 床单。近三个月后，我辞职了，因为我并没有真正学习任何东西。另一个重要因素是创始人/老板。他喜欢告诉实习生有关他正在做的慈善事业和刚租用的新跑车。我真的不是想留在哪里。

Foot in the door:

我以某种方式设法确保了长期的循环股票研究实习a lower middle-market bank. It was in the west coast, and for those of youwho doER在西海岸，您知道生活方式。在我的软技能，职业道德，应对压力的能力以及生产高质量工作产品的能力方面，我在那里长大了。起初这是一场挣扎，但我设法工作了半年。
我决定不留下。令人惊讶的是，生活方式不是破坏交易的人，而是医学博士。对于我来说，他对我进行了太多的管理，无法在未来两年内过渡到全职角色并继续为他工作。我离开后几个月，另一个长期实习生 - 我们基本上是分析师，他们像实习生一样得到报酬，考虑到我们所做的工作量和工作类型 - - 然后几个月后离开了团队，也是一名全日制研究助理。几个月后，另一位副总裁研究助理最终成为一名高级分析师，这意味着我的Orignal MD现在没有人可以使用，除了1-2个薪水不佳的实习生。

MSFand Networking:

我回家大约两个月，然后去了MSFprogram, hoping to jump from there. I was glad that the business school I went to indeed has a lot of resources and a ton of alumni working in finance. I networked heavily. I'm from China (been here 7 years) and before I went to theMSFprogram, I would wake up around 4:30 or 5am every morning at home to get on networking calls. Didn't remember exactly how many calls I made. I was focusing on middle market banks and some boutiques, as I knewBBsandEBswould be highly competitive. Built some great connections over the phone, and got some cold welcomes too.

I had 2 contacts pushing my resume for me before school started. I thought I did well in both, especially for one毫米, where I networked with 6-7 people in the office. The associate who was interviewing me even said this: hey, you are here because you've done your homework. For this round, let's just chat. After this one, go prepare for technicals for the next 1-2 rounds. Eventually, they did not let me pass that round.

I continued to interview.IB,PE, Corp Dev, FP&A, anything related that I could fetch. One big issue was the sponsorship. Since I need a work sponsorship, almost all banks I networked with, stopped sponsoring getting into the 2018-2019 recruiting cycle, including 2 banks where I knew sponsored my friends who pushed resume for me.
During November, 2018, I passed 3 rounds of interviews for a global tech firm's corp deve team, only waiting for the 4th round's result to come out. The first 3 rounds were great: all interviewers let me pass on the spot. The director, who interviewed me for the 3rd round, told me this before we ended the conversation: I've already put you in the final round. I like you a lot and I want to hire you. Prepare well for the last round.
The last one was with a C-level guy from Japan/Korea, and we were having a difficult time communicating since his English was not very good. He also asked me one totally unexpected, but very thought-provoking question: what do you want to do after 20 years? Tbh, I've never thought beyond 10 years before, only vaguely about 20 years.
I waited for 5 weeks and I had calls with the HR every week. Finally, she told me they decided not to hire candidates.

Before the 1-year program ended, I interviewed for about 50 companies in total, not counting the rounds of interviews. I know this number might not be a lot for some of you here, but I really tried everything I could do to get interviews and pass them. I stopped crazily throwing out resumes around April, seeing very few available positions for me to target.

FAS job offer:

In June, one day I got an email from a company about a FAS consultant position. I did not even remember when I sent my resume, but I said yes.
1st round was a 30 minute interview with a director, who later sat next to me in the office. Half technicals, half unexpected but reasonable questions such as : you took a course in group theory, tell me about it. Okay.
2nd round was a bit surprising: they asked me to come to纽约for an on-site assessment, which consists of two parts: the 1st part is a one-hour written test: math, finance, logic, and reading. The 2nd part was a case study, more like a consulting-type than a finance case study.

I was super close to the answer for the case study before time ran out. I didn't think I did too well on that test.

To my surprise, the next day, the director called. I passed, and they wanted me to go to the office for a final round, which consists of two parts: a 1.5-hour financial case study, basically strategy分析DCF建模和30-40分钟的合作伙伴面试。我在案例研究中做错了什么，这是一个小错误，导演说很好。我在伴侣面试中表现不错。这是伙伴和另一位导演。

我唯一的抱怨是，即使我开始在那里工作，他们也没有偿还我的飞行票或酒店费用。费用问题稍后出现了很多次。

I took the offer 7 days later, the same day they extended it.
Thinking about it, I should have given myself more time to decide: later, I had interviews at GIC/Temasec, and got an offer at a Charlotte-basedIBboutique, who gave me a meaningfully higer salary. I decided for the FAS role since the clients (Carlyle,黑色的石头) and deals they work on are global and high-profile. Plus, I do not know anyone in Charlotte, and I want to be in纽约。
Indeed, I got great exposure and I learned a lot.

Laid-off:

学到了很多东西，但没有我想要的那么多。三月份，我的工作超过6个月，我被遗弃了。全球负责人引用了收入和病毒的下降。我没有责怪或大喊，谈判了遣散费，照顾了文书工作，第二天开始编辑我的简历。我的医学博士，一位分析师和我的经理在同一天被解雇。合作伙伴引用了收入大幅下降。
I had many calls with headhunters as well as direct interviews over the following 2.5-3 months. Over 85-90% of them did not sponsor, once they heard my situation. Some calls only lasted for 10-15 seconds because of this, including a couple valuation positions atEBs令我惊讶的是，不赞助人，也许他们只是赞助全职的夏季分析师。
Again, I casted a very wide net: research,IB,PE(my experience has been in renewable and infrastructure), corp deve, project finance,asset management, fintech (I touted my self-learned programming skills and put some sample projects on GitHub), quant finance (I'm a math major after all, although I did not pass the 2nd rounds because it's been too long). Got very close with a couple firms, but eventually did not pass. I was focusing on building sample models to demonstrate my modeling ability --- I don't build models very fast, but I wanted to show I could do it.
在1小时的构建中，预测5年和DCFmodeling exercise, I panicked, and fumbled.

Product Manager Offer:

I have been taking online courses in product management, programming, and brushingup on finance interview questions, such as theWSO指导。我将PM视为我想进入的路线，因为经过3-4个月的努力，我意识到自己想建造产品并创办公司。这是非常冒险的，因为我真的没有太多的储蓄，而且由于我需要学习iOS开发，这会很耗时。但是，我发现，如果我能在产品管理领域找到工作，我将拥有一项宝贵的技能，成为一名企业家。

4 rounds of interview: first 2 rounds with PMs. One guy is a SternMBA。他的背景与我的背景相似。第三轮是耶鲁MBA, who has built his whole career in IT/Tech companies. He tries to warn me about the salary negotiation: "young man, you are lucky to be alive and maybe have a job in 2020 !"

第四/决赛：人力资源。薪水还可以，CNY/RMB中的总COMP 250K+。有了我1 - 2年的经验，我不会称这种薪水不好：它与Bat的报价相当，奖金结构较低。

I'm still looking for other good opportunities, but the deadline of taking the offer is approaching, and I do not want to take a huge risk in 2020.

For those of you who got laid off as well, or those of non-targets who are struggling to break into finance orIB, don't give up ! Maybe you walk slowly, but as long as you walk, you will get somewhere. It may not be the place you want the most, but you won't fail yourself either.

I know this post is super long, and I hope it is helpful to some of you here. Thank you all.