i agree entirely with An Investment Banker Is.. on his description of salespeople....
I run a pan asian sales group selling a very quantative product for one of the top 3 us inv banks, unf here are some realities.
Your degree or academic background bears almost no correlation with your ability to succeed in a job at an investment bank. (Note: succcess is getting paid lots of money in this context. As an aside, you dont event have to be very good at your job to get paid a lot of money, you just need to be very good at getting paid lots of money). The primary use for higher degrees is merely as a candidate filtering device. (Our annual training program has 80 to 90 % MBAs, soon to become TRAINEES on maybe USD75k if they are lucky)
In my firm I can show you a senior trader who has a social science degree, salespeople and traders who have no degrees (admittedly they would find it hard to get a start now), corporate finance people whose biggest attribute (i'm not belittling it) is 15 years working in a particular industry, and scarily funny, managers who lack an ability to do anything except get their staff paid appropriately (which in an investment bank is the only attribute you want your boss to have. If they stay in their box all year and come out to lobby in december that sounds fine to me).
In general, the easiest way to get into an IB is the age old "know someone." Get to meet and know people in the industry, apply for jobs but as in anything have some pat answers which explain why you will add some value. (Note that these dont have to be either sensible or true, you just have to be able to convince your prospective employer that they are). One thing about most investmetn bankers is that they have a finer nose for sniffing out BS than almost any other industry ( it takes an expert to spot one etc)
MBA's are fine to give you a boost in the selection stakes, but pound for pound a CFA course is far superior in the IB world, but it does take 3 years part time. There is actually a bit of a backlash against MBAs at times and it is a character fault of mine and many like me that we regard trainees (yes thats what you will be if you are an MBA with no work experience) as cannon fodder for cheap practical jokes, boring tasks and visits to the coffee shop. I have a desk assistant with a US MBA and he cant get the coffee order right yet.....
Cynicism pervades investment banks, but even we who are most cynical find it terribly disturbing that someone would be so cynical as to pay US$100k for a degree in something they fundamentally dont care about merely to get a job paying plenty. In reality it is probably a sensible economic choice and shows some self belief, and admittedly my whole case collapses because I am allowed to be cynical but no one else is etc etc.....
So heres what I would do....
Get to know people in the business and squeeze them for info on what they do. Bear in mind they will have an a) natural tendency to make it sound terrribly complicated (when it is not), and b) an insurmountable urge to make themselves seem terribly immportant (note the first line of the second paragraph in this post).
Get a really good grounding in statistics. If you want to work in fixed income sales or trading learn your financial maths. If you want to work in corporate finance or investment banking understand accounting and know a bit about tax etc. But please note that you are learning about these primarily so you can convincingly talk the jargon - apart from the stats and maths - that is actually useful.
Heres the bad bit. If you get a job at a top tier bank with no industry experence it will be at entry level. To understand why heres some financial math. At bonus time, the bonus pool for particular desk or region is finite, the trick lies in slicing up the pie. In really simple english I'm not going to pay you out of my pocket. I want to pay you enough so you stay, but no more than that as it effectively comes out of my pocket. And my marginal utility for money is far higher than anyone who works for me.
But all is not lost, I will retire soon or you can do hard yards for a year and when a particular niche in the business goes bid over for people you can parley your year or two of associate into a better paying job at another firm.
One exception is that you may have (say) 10 years experience working in (say) the consumer marketing industry. You can parlay that relatively easily into an analyst job at a bank, again not highly paid but now at least you have the opportunity, or into corporate finance at a higher level if you bring useful industruy contacts to the table.
Nobody new to the game is going to get paid $750 USD per year, entry level even with an MBA is atm sub 100K ( its a buyers market), burt if you work hard, can bear the unbelievable drudgery, make the right connections in 3 to 7 years that money is very achievable. Right place at the right time is also extremely important.
Right now is cyclically a horrible time to get into a bank. Inv banking and equities are massively unprofitable at most firms (some more math - compensation and related costs are generally around 55% to 60% of revenue - revenue in many parts of investment banks is down by 50%. result = plenty of retrenchment globally.) Fixed income has been strong this year but feeling job cuts too lie the rest of banks. But it is very cyclical, at some point in the near future banks will likely be binge hiring again.
One last piece of info is that you do not get paid for loyalty at most large firms although they do try to punish you for dislopyalty by holding back a fair amount of your compensation (at my firm 20%) for three years, and you lose it if you leave inside that period. Until you get a reputatiion as a job hopper, you can generally get paid more and with more guaranteed by changing firms when the demand supply equation is in your favour.
One more last piece of info - investment banking is one of the only examples you can find where you have an extremely large pool of people outside the industry willing to work in the industry for less than thos currently in it, yet the price for labour never goes down. Get someone who has done ECON 101 to explain how that works......
And finally, my final piece of info, I am absolutely 100% in this for the money and the future of my family. I have made lots of good friends in the industry which is a very pleasant bonus, but if I was paid only a "normal" income rest assured I wouldnt work in this industry.
