How to get a career in civil service?

How much can a freshly qualified CA who has a good career profile but not much experience in his articleship, hope to get investment related service sector jobs?

• Like in investment banking and related areas.

• Answer:

  Hey, As you've mentioned "good profile" but "not much experience", I'm trying to play devil's advocate here by saying that you got a dummy for your articleship! :P In any case, shifting to Core Finance Profiles shouldn't be difficult as most of them do require a thorough understanding of Accounts to be able to analyse them better, especially investment banking to begin with.. Largely speaking, your options and your ability to crack in can be given as below: 1- Asset Management: Evaluating portfolios, funds and allocating investments in various products to enhance growth of assets under management Your Chances: Pretty good in certain areas like Private Equity but for more technical roles like Portfolio Management I would recommend trying out CFA or other short finance courses 2- Industry Research: Studying long term trends and overall movement of parameters like Supply, Demand, Prices and Costs for a particular segment (say E-Commerce) to come up with a view of investment of not.. Your Chances: Pretty good in most cases, if you have a good Audit experience then Research becomes easier.. 3- Planning & Budgeting: Being a financial controller in a corporate, helping allocate budgets to various business units and estimating costs/revenues for each of them.. Your Chances: Very good as it covers aspects in Costing and Financial Management which are already covered in your curriculum 4- Investment Banking: Advising businesses on strategic movements like acquiring a company, merging with one or even help in fund raising, etc. Your Chances: Very good as the entry level is more about understanding numbers and being able to work on business models.. 5- Risk Management: Coordinating with traders and operations teams who invest surplus firm money in daily securities. You'll advise on which trades can be passed, how much risk can be assumed, etc. Your Chances: Not as good since it's a technical role demanding more skills in investing and hedging. I would suggest CFA or similar courses if you're really interested in the role.. 6- Treasury Management: Actual trading activity, tracking various markets and taking positions/investing to either hedge current risk or to enhance the return on investments on a large scale. This is the wholesale version of Portfolio Management (done for firms rather than individuals) Your Chances: Again, not as good. You'll probably need to know a lot more and be a wizard with numbers and calculations.. I would strongly suggest looking for Boutique Investment Banks or KPOs and applying there to begin with.. Hope this helps, Good Luck! :) PS: We've interviewed professionals from all these profiles and asked them about their average day at work.. Free content here: http://gradopedia.com/detailed-info :)