>>14427274>Do you have any non-vague advice for finance?I do. I will tell you this: if I had known I wanted to go into finance from 1st year, by now I would have a CFA certification. The CFA covers all of finance and if you can earn a Level 1 or Level 2 before you graduate you will be at a huge advantage because those certs actually carry weight in hiring and they are also incredibly hard to get so now that I'm a working professional I'm having trouble finding time to actually do these tests (I have read the books, and they are amazing).
Other than that, also narrow down what you want to do. Once you figure out what you want to do, the internet is filled with proposed career paths. Hottest paths in finance are Investment Banking, Equity Research and Asset Management. Feel free to research those. If you want to be able to see your family for dinner, then less hot but still well paid options with good work-life balance are commercial banking, corporate banking, risk management and corporate finance.
>What do you do in finance?In the past I've done equity research, trade execution and credit risk management however right now I'm in Corporate Finance. In short, I act as a dedicated financial analyst for a single corporation instead of being in the markets looking at hundreds of companies. My research helps my company make better business and financial decisions. When the company is looking at where to invest their cash, I'll usually be in the call with a couple of PowerPoint slides regarding what we should do with that money. I'm not at the VP level so I do not make the ultimate call, but I'm happy to say that my company has deployed money based on my Excel models so that feels good.
>They're like the hottest companies right now, right?I would say that semiconductor companies are very hot right now but market sentiment changes all the time. But if the market is there + you think you will enjoy the work then that's a great starting place.
