Dear Jarus, I’m considering career u-turn inspired by your portal
Thank you, Jarus. My name is Bayo, and I am a 3rd year student of the department of management and accounting at OAU. I have been in a dilemma of recent on which career choice to make. I had always wanted to be an accountant, and maybe later become a consultant,but I recently stumbled on some articles on your blog in which you discussed investment banking. I love anything that challenges my intellect, and investment banking seems to interest me a lot these days. I want to know the best way to achieve these goals considering the fact that I’m currently on first class, and I do not possess any professional qualification
Bayo
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Dear Bayo,
While it is my joy that someone is being guided to an intellectually challenging career path because of our efforts here, I do not think you should rush yourself. Take your time. I am a big fan of investment banking as a career and you can see my bias towards it from the many articles that dot this blog. However, you don’t need to make a knee-jerk decision. You still have time. Your career plan – accounting, to retire into consulting, is a noble path as well. Investment banking, like I have written in many articles, is a fantastic career path too.
Thankfully, both of them could have the same foundation, you can change anytime along the way. I have a brother that studied Accounting, became chartered accountant at 20, planned to become an accountant, but he is today an investment banker. Reason? His first job was in an investment banking institution and that diverted his initial plan to be a professional accountant *he is actually, as an ICAN-qualified, but works as an IB). Of course, his ICAN qualifications set the tone. So, I will advise you start your professional examination journey with ICAN, which you can enrol for immediately after you finish your first degree (start during service year, like I did), and with your accounting degree, you will write only 2 stages – PE1 and PE2.
By the time you finish ICAN, I’m sure you would have become more informed on which path to eventually settle for – whether accounting or IB. If you decide IB, you may need to write CFA.
Read up other articles and case studies on IB we have posted here. How to build a successful career in IB is also one of the topics we line up at the next Jarushub Career Conference in February 2014, where a CFA charter-holder and Head of Financial Advisory at StanbicIBTC has been scheduled to talk to participants. As a student, I can offer you special discount for attendance fee.
All the best.
Jarus
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