Question regarding Associate position

californiascreamin wrote:To anyone who can offer any help:

If you have NO experience in the private sector, and have spent your years since undergrad in a completely unrelated field (let's say, teaching high school, military, or non-profit), would it be possible to get an offer as an associate from a bank such as Goldman with an MBA degree?

If so, would it have to be top5? Top10? Top20?

Thanks.

I was looking into banking a while back... The gist I got from a lot of firms (though it probably doesn't apply to all firms) is that if you go from undergrad straight to bschool (a top bschool) with no work experience, you will get a position as "Senior Analyst" for a year before being promoted to Associate. It will also be harder for you to compete with the other students at bschool who do have experience. Not sure about what happens if you have work experience, but not related work experience. I believe it was Lehman that told me this.

Hi californiascreamin,

The MBA can be the great equalizer for jobs such as banking and consulting. Many people do the career switch into finance from other fields. Many former bankers don't want to go back to bankding, and they go into PE or hedge funds, so you don't have a ton of competition there. The recruiting process is highly competitive though, perhaps especially at top 5 and top 10 schools, so just getting into the MBA program is not the end of your work. You will have to spend a lot of time and effort trying to get a summer internship during first year.

I'm not familiar with the whole list of schools Goldman recruits from, but you can look at the school websites for data. Wharton's list of summer internships for the class of 2007 has Goldman at the top of the list with 40 hires. (keep in mind that's out of more than 800 students):

https://mbacareers.wharton.upenn.edu/report/hirers_1.cfm

Good luck!

Amy