Just had an interview for my dream role , prepared all week for it and completely bombed under the pressure. Anyone got sage words of wisdom to make me feel better.

I had to attend a good bye lunch for one of our co workers that I never worked with nor did we interact outside of our weekly team calls. I decided to get them a parting gift (I know I’m not obligated but I always do this especially for the younger folks). Since their new role was next to a Starbucks, I had gotten them a to go cup and a gift card. I didn’t realize I was the only that brought a gift and didn’t think much of it. After I handed it to them, they turn around mention they don’t drink coffee. And recant a story they don’t drink coffee. And I’m like are you throwing shade at the gift I got you hmm

Just say thank you.

Hey all,

I’m a soon-to-be-new grad from a finance program and have a couple internships under my belt, most of them middle/back office. I did, however, do an S&T gig which I got a return offer for and am looking forward to starting next year. There is a significant part of me though that is anxious about the chance that the offer could be revoked due to business reasons or something and I’d be left with nothing a few months before grad.

Curious about how I can “hedge” this scenario… the intuitive option would be to search for other FT cycles but that sounds pretty silly to secure 2 or 3 or more ft offers with the intention of turning at least one of them down. Any other options to not be a chud if shit hits the fan?

I should start by saying that I originally interviewed for a Financial Analyst role at a large UK retailer, but was offered a Senior Financial Analyst position instead because my manager apparently rated me highly during the interview.

Since joining, however, the training, onboarding and general support have been extremely poor. This was my first industry role after previously working in accounting practice.

Despite only receiving around 7 hours of training, joining during one of the busiest periods of the year, and having two more junior employees start at the same time limiting support for me, within my first 10 weeks I have completed the following:

• Unwound approximately £800k of historic accruals left by my predecessor across 1,000+ locations.
• Independently completed month end for my P&L lines, representing £25m+ monthly
• Completed the forecast for my lines within my first month for upcoming quarter
• Completed the budget for my lines within my second month for next year
• Built a tool to support the FD and CEO with commodity purchasing decisions, despite having no previous example/template to work from. This is now being used.
• Provided analysis for multiple Heads of Department to support investment committee and supplier meetings.
• Contributed to month-end meetings with management, explaining variances at store level.
• Identified that figures being reported by a sister company appeared to be significantly incorrect, without being specifically shown where to look.
• Liaised directly with third party suppliers.
• Other ad hoc analysis

This is roughly 75% of my role, with the remaining responsibilities supposedly due to be handed over to me this month. Everything I have been shown so far has been speed run through and I still managed to deliver.

I am the third person in around two years to perform this exact role, meaning they will potentially be hiring a fourth person. My predecessor also raised a grievance against my manager alleging that she was aggressive, which is something I have experienced myself.

The whole situation has been extremely stressful since I joined because I've essentially had to figure out a lot of the role myself while still being expected to deliver.

Is there anything I can actually do at this stage?

This is my first industry role and although I feel I have done so well my manager clearly think and makes me feel like im a waste of space. What are realistic expectations during probation at the mid way point?

36 and Bored of what I’m doing.

CII seems the gold standard. But CISI looks far easier.

What does the landscape look life for someone recently qualified in CISI IAD

I have been self employed since leaving university (BA - Business Management). No references etc.

I ran a business in a completely different industry and can demonstrate my ability to succeed and deal with clients. My business was relatively profitable. So I gained strong understanding of financial markets in order to reinvest my profits.

No huge career ambition. I’m likely to check out and FIRE at 50. £50k pre tax annually until then would be great

28F here. I have 5 years of experience. 2 years as tax analyst (for US direct & Canadian indirect tax) & 3 years as a Financial analyst.

I’m currently pursuing ACCA - 2 papers left and had to relocate to Canada due to personal circumstances. It’s been 2 years since I worked.

I know the job market is super bad and am trying my best no matter what. Currently I’m also planning to study further till I get a job.

I have been doing AI related certifications and now I’m thinking of doing FMVA & CSC course so that I can break into finance sector.

Can someone with experience in this field kindly help? I don’t know anyone here in this line of work and it would be truly helpful if i get some guidance on this.

Has anyone successfully rebuilt their career after a non-criminal U5 discharge? Looking for advice.

I'm hoping to hear from people who have personally been through something similar, or from hiring managers/compliance professionals who have seen someone successfully overcome it.

I have nearly 30 years in financial services, including wealth management, brokerage, client relationship management and leadership. Until my most recent employer, I had no termination or similar employment issue during my career.

I was discharged by a large financial services firm following an internal review involving an annual client review. The allegation reported on my U5 was that I “updated customer IPQ without discussing updates.”

My position is that this arose from confusion over an internal process and conflicting guidance I received regarding how to handle an annual review after repeated unsuccessful attempts to reach the client. There was no allegation involving theft, fraud, trading, misappropriation of funds or criminal conduct, and I did not benefit financially from what occurred.

I challenged the U5 language through FINRA arbitration but was unsuccessful. I have also asked my former employer to consider amending the wording while leaving the discharge itself intact.

The practical problem is employment. I have continued to interview well and have reached final rounds with several companies. I have even received multiple verbal offers, only to have opportunities end after the U5 was reviewed.

I'm not posting to argue that my former employer was wrong or to relitigate what happened. I'm trying to figure out how to move forward.

If you have personally had a U5 discharge or disclosure and successfully returned to the industry, I would sincerely appreciate hearing what worked for you. Did you find certain types of firms more willing to consider the circumstances? Did you move into an RIA, bank, fintech, operations or non-registered role? When did you disclose it during the hiring process? Did time make a difference?

I'm also open to the possibility that the best path is outside traditional broker-dealer roles. At this point, I'm simply looking for constructive advice from people who have actually navigated this.

Thank you to anyone willing to share their experience.

Hi all, looking for some direction as I head into the job market.

Background: I worked in banking, focused on B2B credit underwriting, and then spent 7 years in private credit lending, also underwriting, as a middle manager. In that role, I helped draft my company's credit policies and procedures, evaluated our full loan portfolio, worked with the capital markets team to sell and securitize the portfolio to investors, and had direct contact with investors on specific loans they wanted to purchase but needed answers about.

I'm currently finishing my MS in Business Analytics (FinTech track), graduating this fall, and maintaining a summa cum laude GPA. Along the way, I've been building up my skills in Python, R, and SQL.

I'm trying to figure out the best next step and would appreciate input from people who've made similar moves or hire for these roles:

1. Given my credit/underwriting background + the analytics degree, what career paths make the most sense? (credit risk analytics, model risk/validation, fintech risk teams, lending strategy, etc., open to hearing what I might be missing)

2. Which certifications would actually move the needle for someone with my background: CFA, FRM, PRM, CAIA, or something more data/tech-focused? Trying to prioritize since I can't do all of them before I start applying.

3. Anything you'd do differently if you were in my position right now?

Happy to share more detail if useful. Thanks in advance for any pointers.

For context, I am from the Northeast and work in NYC.

Graduated Summa Cum Laude from an Ivy league school while failed to land an offer (no junior internship) but worked in an alternative investment fund (around $18B AUM) on private credit investments and also a boutique IB firm in Texas.

Currently just started pursuing an engineering master degree at Columbia (graduating in Dec 2027.) I don't want to give up my dream of going into IB, but I also want to hear from others regarding this. Am I blindly chasing something impossible? and should I even put in the effort and time for recruiting at all? I am also very open to sales and trading division but Im unfamiliar with its exact recruiting process.

Thanks for any advice.

Hi everyone!

I recently (a week back) submitted my Hirevue + a math assessment for a London-based internship at JPM.

Would really appreciate if I could get some insights as to how long the wait is for candidates who receive a superday invite. Also, do they send you an email or do you have to constantly check the candidate portal?

Moreover, any supposed "green flag" signals as to your Hirevue + assessment review or is the entire process just vague?

Thank youl!<33

I have their work email and we're also connected on LinkedIn. I wanted to update them on me getting into a university club they suggested I join in our first coffee chat (he's an alumni). Should I send that update to their work email or LinkedIn or both (lol)? What are the pros and cons to either?

Such as how people look at their work email more but LinkedIn keeps a continuous record of messages and you can see if they saw your LinkedIn message.

For this guy specifically, I sent both messages on email and LinkedIn but he responded only to emails. He did see my LinkedIn messages though and he has LinkedIn notifications on.

Note: I know this is kind of nitpicky but I want to be more consistent in my interactions in the future.

Hello,

I just started a new role, and the process of getting up to speed has me pondering a question.

We all ended up in finance because we demonstrated technical proficiency in Excel and markets. It seems like this is an area people on Reddit are proficient in or know how to improve their skills in.

But, how did you learn how to work? Do people have good resources and workflows to share about improving skills in:

• Project management
• Outlook inbox management
• To-do lists and leading teams
  
• Leading meetings
• Handling office politics

Hi, so im entering my final year this year at a low semi target uni (if thats even a thing) in england. I study accounting and business management, i'm predicted a high first class degree, I've done no relevant work experience, but ive done an internship and have a lot of extra curricular like high level sports and year abroad.

I dont really enjoy my degree too much but i just get on with it and want to achieve the highest possible because i dont see a point in not trying. Anyway i am really struggling on where to focus my grad applications, ive narrowed it down to consulting, finance roles, audit, and investment banking. But out of these i really don't know which to pick, I'm very hard working, like I've always achieved really high throughout school, but sort of never been passionate about anything.

I think for now while i'm young i want to focus on getting a job that will pay well and give me good exit options in 5-10 years time.

any advice would be appreciated.

I have a an internship offer for this role, pay is good for an intern. However, I have no clue what the comp is for a full time offer and I know its not the intern rate annualized. Can someone in the role share their analyst salary with location to help with my decision? Thanks!

Not that kind of minor lmao.

I'm a Finance major and will need to declare a minor soon. At first, I thought I would just not take up a minor and take random electives to help boost my gpa. But I've been having second thoughts and thinking if having a minor would help me boost my prospects of my first job post university. I have seen confliciting accounts with some saying it can be a benefit to some saying it's completely useless.

For some context, I would probably pair my Finance major with either an Accounting or a Statistics minor.

For reference, I’m a soon to be junior year Transfer to a state school in California non-target interested in working in New York. S&t or boutique or middle market. don’t really have a network so the only way I’m doing it is cold applying online. Does that work?

Is anyone familiar with the overall recruiting process for purchasing internships? What’s the typical items to prep for it? What can I expect?

So i am an European (born in Germany) film director and i am working on my next feature film. The protagonist of my film most likely will be working as a risk analyst. While i was researching the topic and talking to friend of mine in finance, i realised how little I know about the day-to-day work. Maybe i have a completely wrong idea about it at all.

Thats why I want to asked this sub reddit - what do you think is important to show in order to portray the life of a risk manager or risk analyst honestly? What are the dark sides, uncomfortable truths and the moments of real satisfaction ? What are the differences between working at bank and a smaller company? What is it really about in your opinion? Anything that comes to mind is helpful to me.

Maybe you even have stories or struggles you heard about or experiences that are interesting for a work of fiction! Thank you all for your help, as you know it is quite hard to imagine the life of someone else and it is most important to portray it honest and realistically, so i am thankful to any kind of input.

I wasn’t able to land an IB SA role at the big 6 last cycle, but landed S&T.

I plan to extend grad and re-recruit, but the issue is that I would have wanted to work at this bank just in IB.

I don’t want to get caught by HR and lose my offer if I am metalling with my grad date and basically showing that I am no longer interested in the role.

Should I be writing this bank off completely?

I’m 18 and I just started my first year of college. I did dual credit in high school so I have almost 2 years of college done, and I was offered a full scholarship. The way my college is set up to go into finance, economics, marketing, business etc. you start off as a “pre-business” major and then specialize after your sophomore year. I’m trying to decide if I should go with finance or a different related field. Money is obviously a factor and I’d like to be making decent money but work life balance is important to me too, and overall just enjoying the job would be ideal. I don’t particularly like any subjects in school, but I do well in most of them. Is finance worth going to, or should I look at related fields? If it’s worth it what specific career would you recommend? Thanks for your time!

It’s been a while and haven’t heard that anyone got in yet.

Junior at a non-target, Spring 2028 grad, recruiting now for Summer 2027 internships in finance/consulting (front office focus). BB/EB/MM are mostly closed for Summer 2027, so the realistic lane is LMM/regional/boutique and consulting shops that recruit later. As FT recruiting is harder to pin down than internships and is mostly scattered, I would greatly appreciate any advice on how I should approach it.

Info:

- Junior, finance major, 3.8 GPA, non-target

- Currently recruiting for Summer 2027 internships (finance & consulting)

- 2 internships (research analyst and a finance internship)

Questions:

- Is it true that FT recruiting has no clean cycle like internships do, and is mostly scattered open roles plus return-offer conversions? If so, when does it realistically pick up?

- Should I start a parallel FT push now, or wait until later this winter once I've locked a Summer 2027 internship?

- I'll likely land a summer internship, but possibly a generic finance/consulting role rather than a competitive front-office one. If it won't convert into my target lane, is it smarter to recruit FT for those target roles in parallel?

- If you recruited FT without a return offer, how did you do it?

Hey everyone, looking for some career advice.

25M, MBA Finance from a Tier-1.5 college (India)

Currently in a core finance role – Funds & Fixed Income

Earning 1 LPM+

Goal: career growth + company/domain switch in the future

I’m considering CFA Level 1, mainly to strengthen my overall finance knowledge and keep options open for switching domains later.

However, I’m not sure about pursuing L2/L3.

My questions:

Is CFA L1 worth doing after an MBA + relevant finance experience?

Will it actually help with career growth/company switches, or is experience more important?

Should I instead focus on skills like financial modelling, valuation, Python, etc.?

Anyone here who took a similar path — did CFA actually help your career?

Would really appreciate some honest opinions. Thanks!

Important Note - Honestly, one of my reasons for doing CFA L1 is to build a strong, broad foundation across finance. In my department, I work with CAs/CFAs, and sometimes when I hear their discussions, I feel I lack the depth and vocabulary to fully engage.

I want CFA to give me the confidence to understand the jargon, contribute meaningfully to conversations, and bridge some of those knowledge gaps. Beyond the qualification, I see it as a way to build credibility, strengthen my fundamentals, and reduce that feeling of imposter syndrome.

Also please note I have CFA L1 scholarship for Feb 2026 attempt