Pay attention in math class now and like it. If it bores you or if it’s just something you slough through every afternoon, banking probably isn’t up your alley.
Start networking now. Take a variety of courses (with a relation to math and business, of course), get to know your professors, and get involved on campus. The more work you do now, the less work you’ll have to do later.
This is, obviously, apart from managing your own finances. If you want to get into investment banking or broking, it’ll be of benefit to you to start managing your own stock portfolio. If you can’t handle your own money, you probably shouldn’t be handling anyone else’s!
Sometimes referred to as “the best book about mergers and acquisitions,"[3] X Research source , take a gander at “Barbarians at the Gate. " As far as sales and trading go, look at “Liar’s Poker. " If it doesn’t sound like fun, you’re doing it wrong.
If you’re looking into investments, mergers and acquisitions, public finance, leveraged finance, blah blah blah, you’ll need an internship. It’s only if you’re planning on going the personal banker route and staying relatively small that an internship may be unnecessary stress on your pocketbook.
Entry-level, no-degree-required positions are generally part-time positions and have a high turn-over because employees often are college students who return to school or employees who move up to higher paid positions. Positions such as financial managers, which can include the bank’s controller, credit manager, branch managers, treasurer or finance officer, risk and insurance manager, cash manager, and manager of international banking require a bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, or a related field. Positions that require additional training include investment banking sales agents. Many agents obtain their Master’s degrees in Business Administration (MBA), but it is the company’s specialized business model that is imperative to learn for an employee.
From a personal banker, you can then be promoted to services manager, store manager, business specialist, or become a licensed personal banker. The web that bankers weave is clearly quite intricate! To be a personal banker (at everywhere from your local credit union to a behemoth like Wells Fargo), you’ll need your BA.
You’ll start out as an analyst, move your way up to associate, then VP, then Managing Director, then a department/division head, executive something or other, and then, finally, CEO. At the beginning, you’ll be swimming in your workload and not making a lot of money, but at the end you’ll be swimming in your money and not doing a lot of work.
If size and location (and pay) are already sorted, be sure to think about their training program. Some banks will hand you over to the dogs more quickly than others. So before you sign that contract, make sure you know what’s expected of you in the first few months.
If investment banking is your bag, you’ll probably get hired on as an analyst for a very specific 2-year stint. You can imagine that after these two years, loads of people take the resume builder and get out of the banking world. Beyond the analyst position is the financial assistant position. Once you get here, you’re considered a “lifer. " You’ll still be working 100-hour work weeks (did we not mention that yet? Yeah. . . . ), but at least you’ll be able to boss your analysts around. Starting off as an analyst isn’t going to be pretty. You’ll spending the greater part of your waking life (and you won’t get much sleep) doing math, fixing Excel spreadsheets, and being treated like you’re not worth much. Just so you know. But, again, it gets better. Way better.
This is only for a specific branch of banking – namely investing. If you won’t be doing any of that, you may not need to worry about taking these exams. By the time the need to take an exam (be it these two or not), you won’t need this wikiHow article to outline the process for you. You can get a license as a personal banker. Your bank will help facilitate this for you once you have enough experience under your belt.
For a while, you won’t have much of a social life (unless, of course, you’re constantly on uppers to avoid needing sleep, but that’s a terrible idea). If that’s not a sacrifice you’re willing to make (which is why loads of people get out early on), you may need to consider a different career – or at least banking on a much, much smaller level.
If you don’t know whether or not an MBA is for you, sleep on it. It’s a lot of money and time spent and if you don’t need it, there’s little point in worrying about it. Plenty of people don’t have them and do more than just fine.
You’ll also be in situations that are stressful due to your coworkers. At the beginning, there may be some pretty fierce competition. You gotta believe in yourself and think of it all as hazing, not personal attacks. There’s only so much money going around, so some people can get quite nippy.
It’s all schmoozing and boozing at the end. All that work you did early on will finally pay off. People will come to you – there’s no need to come to them. This will take years, sure, maybe even more than a decade, but it can come with the right amount of persistence (and, well, economic upturns).
