The Ivy Scholars guide to pursuing a successful career in business and its popular sectors.
Business is an incredibly popular field for both high school and college students. It offers a great blend of quantitative and qualitative skills, paired with high pay. However, business is a general term. Essentially every private entity is structured as a business, so understanding the possible career paths under this umbrella is important to prevent becoming lost in generality. This guide will inform you on the most common business paths across different industries in finance, ranging from financial services to accounting.
This guide is focused on careers found across the college spectrum, but note that some of these are more difficult to achieve from a lower-ranked school. For instance, financial services fields such as investment banking and quantitative finance are usually reserved for students from the Ivies and similarly regarded schools. However, it is possible to break into any of the listed career paths from anywhere, given enough effort and skill.
Financial services is one of the most popular sectors for business students and is generally seen as the most prestigious because it includes the highest-paying entry-level professions such as investment banking and private equity. This industry is focused on providing financial services to individuals on both sides of the market. Some roles focus on buying securities and trading for the benefit of their investors, whereas others are predicated on selling services such as advisory and products such as derivatives.
Consulting is another incredibly popular industry, usually a close second to investment banking and other financial services roles. These jobs are usually generalist at the entry-level, especially in management consulting, but get more specified in industry-specific firms. Though the job description differs based on the type of consulting, consultants advise companies on future strategy and decision-making to maximize financial performance and long-term value.
Corporate finance is not as popular at the top schools because of the investment banking/consulting dominance, but is still a great choice and popular at more mid-tier schools. This industry is also incredibly broad because it essentially covers any financial function INSIDE a business. Though these jobs often start at a lower entry-level salary, they frequently provide the best advancement opportunities. Surviving till the top of the food chain within financial services and consulting is rather difficult given the intense competition and sacrifices on work-life balance, but is significantly easier in corporate finance functions. Larger companies also have more executive positions, making advancing simpler.
Accounting, like corporate finance, is perceived as a second-tier start to a business career at top schools, but is still excellent and offers great opportunities to lower prestige colleges. The Big Four, however, have a significant prestige advantage and people from top schools often pursue these opportunities. Accounting is divided into public and private. The former focuses on third-party audits and providing services, whereas the latter hones in on a specific corporation’s internal financial record-keeping. The work-life balance at top accounting firms is dismal, though not reaching the levels of investment banking. Advancing can also become difficult given the smaller team environments in accounting.
Operations and supply chain management focuses on a specific business function within a corporation. Most top business school graduates never enter this industry. As such, these positions are much more approachable for the common business major. These roles are responsible for ensuring the cohesion of the production process from raw to sold product. The different jobs occur at various junctures of this process. Like corporate finance, excelling and moving up the ladder is easier because of the large overhead most large corporations carry.
Marketing is an incredibly broad sector because it applies to essentially every business imaginable. This guide attempts to break down the roles more individually, but note that differences exist across industries. People from every type of school enter this field because it is almost separate from typical business roles. Rather than worrying about finances as in every other job role described prior to this, these roles emphasize ideas. As such, marketing creates a different experience and offers varying pay. Ascension up the promotion ladder is also more unpredictable as it is mostly performance-based.
The following jobs arguably fall under business. In other words, they are somewhat in the business realm, but also require other skills, mostly in technology.
Quantitative finance is an increasingly exclusive field and is only accessible to mathematically-focused financial minds at top schools such as Stanford and MIT. Though these are technically business roles parallel to many found in financial services, they use computer science and mathematical techniques to improve financial performance. As such, these quantitative skillsets are prioritized even over finance knowledge at times. Many of the people working in these roles are mathematics or hard sciences majors because they have the necessary background in mathematics and computation. To compensate for the jobs’ difficulty, quantitative finance pays extremely well, often doubling investment banking pay.
Technology is another broad term, but defines an array of emerging jobs for business majors. The non-technological roles at these firms pay incredibly well, often rivaling the traditional behemoths of investment banking and consulting. This Silicon Valley culture also carries over into the work-life balance as people are not expected to work more than 40 hours. On an hour-adjusted basis, technology roles essentially pay double the best paying business roles in any other function.
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Salary data for many careers is variable because of the spread across industries. Most of the salary data is derived from top companies, so expect lower compensation numbers as firm size decreases. Generally, the salary data in the financial services section may be a bit deflated, and inflated in sections such as corporate finance.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $80,000 – $300,000
The financial services sector is dedicated to providing financial services to individuals and institutions. This comes in various forms, with entities ranging from banks to investment houses providing financial services in fundamentally different ways. Financial services jobs are often the most well-paying, but also require a substantial work commitment.
Understanding financial services jobs also requires a fundamental understanding of the buy-side and the sell-side. The buy-side refers to the side of the market that buys securities and other investments, whereas the sell-side is responsible for organizing the creation of these investment vehicles, market-making, among other interactions which facilitate the sell-side of the financial markets.
IB is one of the most lucrative and popular fields within the financial services industry. They are highly stylized in popular culture, but the job is actually quite mundane. The investment banking division (IBD) of a bank is responsible for the creation of capital for other companies, governments, and entities. It usually does so by offering a suite of services, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to restructuring, and generally operates on the sell-side. Most people enter IB as analysts out of undergraduate.
The details generally vary by division. For instance, a mergers and acquisitions banker is tasked with participating in Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, whereas a restructuring banker is tasked with saving Sears from bankruptcy. However, the general job description remains fairly similar. Analysts deal with most of the grunt work in IB. This includes constructing financial models, organizing pitch decks for their seniors to interact with clients, and other small-time responsibilities. The analyst’s job is not glorious, but it acts as a bootcamp to build relevant financial modeling and intuition for exit opportunities to the sell-side. They also have the opportunity to interact with C-suite executives at top companies regularly, so analysts are not as moribund as they are made out to be in many forums. But the difficult work culture and generally unrewarding nature of the actual work remain true. The compensation and exit opportunities, however, make the tradeoff tolerable for many.
Top Employers Include: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Evercore, and Centerview.
Estimated Y1 All-In Compensation: $150,000
PE is an alternative investment vehicle designed to capitalize on private companies, those not found on public stock exchanges. PE firms have a variety of strategies in investments, usually depending on their fund size. Most PE firms like to take a majority stake in their investment and hold it for 5-10 years, with the median hold time being approximately 7 years. The size of the companies they invest in determines their standing in the market. Lower Middle Market PE firms, for instance, invest in smaller, regional companies that have reached maturity, whereas megafunds such as Blackstone have the ability to take major corporations on stock exchanges private.
The motivation behind PE is simple. These firms identify struggling companies or entities with room for improvement. They then take a controlling stake, so they have control of the executive leadership and the overall decisions the company makes. These firms then deploy their strategies and sell in 5-10 years after the changes have materialized for a significantly higher valuation. The sale happens in one of two forms: a private sale to another PE firm or private entity, or a public listing onto a stock exchange.
People usually enter PE after completing their IB analyst stints. IB is essentially the only way to enter this industry because of its unique recruitment process, though it is possible to enter from a non-traditional role at a smaller PE firm. Reference Ivy Scholars’ PE career guide for more information on its recruitment process. These employees usually enter at the associate level and are responsible for financial modeling, pitch decks, and sometimes managing portions of portfolio companies. Megafunds, the largest PE firms, have begun hiring from undergraduate institutions (essentially only Wharton and Harvard) for analyst positions. These employees have similar roles as associates, but with less responsibility.
Top Employers Include: Blackstone, KKR, TPG Capital, Carlyle Group, and Vista Equity Partners.
Estimated Y1 All-In Compensation: $300,000
NOTE: This figure represents PE associate compensation, which is the most popular entry point into PE. PE analysts are rarer and hired directly out of undergraduate, and are paid slightly more than IB analysts (somewhere around $175,000).
In reality, VC is merely a subcategory of PE because their inherent function is the same. VC firms are alternative investment firms looking to invest in private companies and exit at higher multiples. However, they target different companies and have different strategies. They invest in startups and growth potential companies, usually in the technology and healthcare sectors because these spaces feature the most activity. Most VC firms keep a minority stake within their portfolio companies because they actively seek founder-driven companies and look to hit big on some investments, rather than looking for consistent returns like in PE.
The motivation for VC is essentially the same as for PE, but VCs look to actively fund the growth of startups to have exits through private sale to a brand-name corporation for a huge sum or a public listing, although the latter is rarer. The hold time on these investments depends on how long the company has existed and at which size it believes it will plateau.
People usually enter VC from technology and IB roles in healthcare or technology. Undergraduates, particularly from Stanford and Berkeley, are increasingly breaking into VC because of their quality and geographical proximity to Silicon Valley. VCs are always incredibly well-paid because these firms usually carry small teams with incredibly progressive principals.
Top Employers Include: Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz, and Greycroft.
Estimated Y1 All-In Compensation: $100,000
NOTE: VC analysts take a steep pay cut compared to other prestigious financial services roles because the junior role does not require as much technical ability and does not directly translate into leadership later on. However, the pay increases at a faster rate, so VC compensation is more of a slow burn.
Hedge funds are high-risk investment vehicles designed to cater to high net-worth individuals. They usually have incredibly high minimum incomes to maintain prestige and look to accumulate massive pools of capital per investor to aggressively use large sums to make interesting investment maneuvers. Many of the most prominent people in the financial services industry, ranging from Bill Ackman to Steve Cohen, are hedge fund managers. Hedge funds are obviously on the buy-side because they actively invest their investors’ money into assets.
Many managers select a niche to specialize in, but there are some generalist hedge funds. Most hedge funds have a specific philosophy. These include long/short, arbitrage, among others. You should research these more in detail to see which investment strategies pique interest the most.
These roles are quite sparse because hedge funds like to run lean operations. They prefer tight-knit investment teams to encourage continuity of philosophy. However, it is possible to break into larger hedge funds such as Point72 and Citadel out of undergrad, or after an IB stint. These firms care a lot more about an individual’s skill and intuition than their paper worth, though the latter often correlates with the former. Hedge fund analysts are usually researchers, creating investment theses and brainstorming ideas. They influence investments, but becoming a trader is usually a step up the ladder.
Top Employers Include: Blackrock, AQR Capital, and Bridgewater Associates.
Estimated Y1 All-In Compensation: $200,000
NOTE: This figure is for junior analysts at HFs – those straight out of undergraduate. People transitioning from IB and similar fields are paid substantially more. However, compensation is highly variable because your bonus can be a fraction of the base or several multiples, depending on performance.
Asset management usually exists as a division within a larger bank that offers a suite of services; unlike hedge funds, which usually operate as entirely independent entities. The industry is quite technically similar to HFs in that these divisions act as pooled investment vehicles looking to maximize their investors’ wealth. However, the main difference comes in exclusivity. Asset management is reachable to the common man, whereas hedge funds specialize in investing high-net-worth individuals’ assets. In other words, asset managers are far more risk-averse. This translates to a generally less interesting job.
Asset managers work across asset classes and industries, but are usually split into teams because big corporations work better under this model. Asset management teams are decently lean, but the overall asset management arm of a bank may be quite populated. In fact, banks such as UBS have increasingly pushed asset management into the main money maker for their institution; though that may be attributed to its massive fall from grace after the 2008 market crash.
Entry-level asset management employees are usually tasked with financial modeling and equity research within their specific teams. Essentially, they are hedge fund analysts without the creativity and risk associated with hedge funds. Ultimately, the work is fairly mundane as is the case in IB, but it allows you to be on the buy-side. A more generous work culture and fewer exit opportunities, however, create lower compensation and somewhat worse exits. Still, it’s a great career to enter.
Top Employers Include: Blackrock, Vanguard, UBS, Fidelity, and State Street.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $80,000
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Wealth management usually exists as a division within a larger bank that offers a suite of services, though wealth management firms also exist at the local level, due to their people-focused culture. This industry is quite similar to asset management, but it includes targeted investing. Essentially, wealth managers work with individual investors to financially plan their futures and invest according to that plan. This prevents investments from being pooled as they are in asset management and hedge funds. However, wealth management is still a buy-side job in which employees actively invest money.
Wealth management firms usually work with common investors, but private wealth management (PWM) is a prestigious subsection of wealth management. Here, wealth managers interact with high-net-worth individuals like those found at hedge funds to plan their financial futures and use their large stores of capital to make more creative and risky investments. These groups are incredibly hard to enter and often cover a large portion of a bank’s business. UBS and Merrill Lynch, for instance, are notorious for relying on their PWM divisions to make money.
Entry-level wealth management employees are usually tasked with financial modeling and equity research within their specific teams. A more generous work culture and fewer exit opportunities create lower compensation and somewhat worse exit potential. Still, it’s a great career to enter.
Top Employers Include: UBS, Edward Jones, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $80,000
Equity researchers analyze stocks to help portfolio managers make better-informed investment decisions. These analysts usually examine the current market conditions and create valuations and algorithms to scout potential investment opportunities. However, they do not do any of the actual investing. Instead, they publish their research into market reports, report the projections seen on daily news channels, or internally recommend investments to portfolios within their bank.
Equity research is not seen as the most glamorous job because it does not feature IB-level compensation or the prestige of buy-side trading. Instead, equity researchers develop an excellent research technique, both quantitative and qualitative. Oftentimes, they become incredibly specialized in their corner of the market – most equity researchers are assigned a portfolio of companies in the same industry to continually analyze. This leads to exits into hedge fund and quantitative fund research roles and/or trading roles at incredibly specialized firms. It is not the most glamorous industry, but is certainly very intriguing as a job and features a niche career trajectory.
Top Employers Include: JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Barclays, and Goldman Sachs.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $100,000
S&T is often seen as the little brother to IB. That may be true in terms of perceived prestige, but they fulfill divergent functions. S&T is a blended sell-side and buy-side job, though S&T employees at name-brand banks usually only sell securities. Their job is to inform market participants about offerings and advise institutional and retail clients on investment decisions.
S&T often works internally as well, particularly in initial public offerings. When investment bankers are executing an initial public offering of a company, for instance, S&T employees raise interest in the secondary markets to help the IB division increase the success of the IPO and therefore its fees.
S&T features a more generous work-life balance and slightly lower pay, but much of the compensation is performance-based. The exit opportunities out of S&T are generally the same as IB, but are more muted because they are not perceived as well-trained in the financial modeling skills required to perform well in PE.
Top Employers Include: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Barclays, and Credit Suisse.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $135,000
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $80,000 – $100,000
Consulting is an incredibly popular business industry and is often seen as a corollary to investment banking. The prevailing trend at many business schools remains that IB or consulting are the best careers, and this section caters to the second half of that dynamic. Broadly, consulting firms provide professional business advice to other businesses on a variety of factors, ranging from operations to marketing.
Most people think of management consulting when thinking of this bracket of services. While management consulting does dominate the types of jobs in people’s minds, there are other types of consulting, and we will cover them all.
Management consulting is aimed at the top levels of the client business. These firms seek to improve other companies’ executive structure and broader strategy. This focus on vision ensures their work remains fairly high-level and management consultants oftentimes never touch the operational realities of an organization. Some criticize management consultancy for being too disconnected from the roots of a business, but a long-term vision is necessary for any company’s survival and management consultants make their living off improving this vision.
This industry is perfect for undergraduates unsure about their future career path, because management consulting provides a fundamental base in many industries and allows you to interact with important executives regularly. Management consultants do not solely work with businesses either, with firms such as McKinsey & Company regularly advising national governments and the United Nations. This allows consultants to gain a wealth of experience across industries and develop a generalist business aptitude.
Management consulting requires its employees to frequently travel, but features a better work-life balance than the financial services industries. Compensation in management consulting is relatively competitive to fields such as IB, with the base pay being just as much, if not more. However, junior consultants do not make much in bonus pay, therefore decreasing the overall compensation.
Top Employers Include: McKinsey, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Deloitte.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $100,000
NOTE: McKinsey, Bain, and BCG pay around $110,000, whereas the firms just below them pay about $95,000. The compensation shrinks as the firm size does, as well. As such, the estimate is an average Y1 salary for someone at a top firm.
Internal consulting is becoming a more popular choice as the consulting industry establishes itself as one of the premier business careers. Many companies are now recognizing the value of developing in-house consulting to reduce their expenditure on third-party consultants. Capital One, Deloitte, and others have a robust internal consulting infrastructure that many college graduates find themselves in.
Internal consulting is slightly more general than management consulting because the function can vary. As management consultants disperse across industries, internal consultants spread themselves across the levels. This means that an operational consultant and strategy consultant can coexist under the same internal consulting infrastructure. These in-house consulting programs also equip employees with fairly generalist skills, with a keen understanding of the particular industry they find themselves in.
Internal consultants also travel and feature a better work-life balance, but are paid less than management consultants. Ultimately, in-house consulting roles are also lucrative options.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $80,000
NOTE: This is highly variable across industries. The major takeaway from this datapoint is that internal consulting roles generally pay less than management consulting jobs.
Consulting is an incredibly broad industry, but management and internal consulting dominate among the junior-level employee market. Other niches within consulting exist, including operational, strategic, and information technology consulting. These firms are usually industry-specific or function-specific and cater well to their niche. These consulting firms are usually used as supplementary consultants to management consultants in Fortune 500 or other large companies.
It is difficult to have pay estimates for more niche aspects of consulting, but it is generally lower-paying than management consulting, but still has a generalist foundation which allows employees to transition to other corporate development roles in the future.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: N/A
NOTE: This is a catch-all category, so providing salary data is meaningless.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $75,000 – $85,000
Corporate finance is an umbrella term used to define the area of finance concerned with corporations addressing funding concerns, managing their capital structure, accounting, and other functions. In other words, corporate finance refers to the finance roles within an organization unlike financial services, where firms provide financial services to other firms.
Corporate finance is often seen as a less prestigious start to a career, with most students opting for IB and consulting, but many of those same people transition back into corporate finance because it has a direct track to upper management, ending at the Chief Financial Officer Position. On the other hand, IB and consulting have such high attrition that people often do not survive for the promotion to truly important positions.
Corporate development is seen as the most strategic arm of corporate finance. These teams are often grouped with strategy, but operate in a mixed role in firms without in-house consultants. This area of corporate finance addresses the corporate relations and long-term vision a company possesses. This translates to having a high-level view of the company and facilitating relationships with bankers for mergers and acquisitions.
Corporate development is similar to consulting because of the high-level nature of the job. However, there is a core difference: they only look within the firm rather than having a roster of clients to attend to. This means that employees in corporate development develop a firm understanding of the company and the sector it lies in. This leads to exit opportunities within the industry and oftentimes to management consulting at higher levels.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $85,000
FP&A teams are responsible for lower-level financial management usually concerning operations. These experiences are incredibly rewarding for people looking to understand a particular company at a core level and manage operational affairs from a financial perspective.
FP&A includes budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, among other related functions within the corporate finance arm of a given firm. These teams are also incredibly interconnected with other corporate finance functions such as treasury and corporate development because they act as the financial core of the firm. Bad FP&A can sink a company’s financial survival because this management, albeit operationally tedious at times, is fundamental.
Most FP&A employees begin out of undergrad, or have transitioned from a similar finance and accounts-based role. Many Big Four accountants transition to upper-level FP&A management later in their careers. These employees are well-positioned for promotions within the firm because they understand its finances at an even more fundamental level than the rest of the corporate finance functions.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $80,000
The treasury management function is focused on optimizing the balance sheet. This includes ensuring the best balance between assets and liabilities and fleshing out the balance sheet in a beneficial way for the long term. These teams usually meet extensively with bankers to mull over products such as lines of credit, cash equivalents, and short-term investment.
Treasury management employees become incredibly well-versed with managing assets as a corporation rather than an individual, quite a rare skill in the finance industry. Approaching long-term profitability from a pure balance sheet angle is not common amongst retail and institutional investors, but it creates interesting possibilities. Many companies’ treasury management arms invest heavily into equipment, pure land (not real estate), and research and development. These functions are essentially irrelevant outside of corporations, which renders the skillset highly specialized, but rare.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $75,000
This function debatably falls under the corporate finance description and is quite niche. However, we include it under corporate finance because investor relations focuses on the shareholder equity portion of the balance sheet and specializes in what its name is: investor relations.
These teams usually decide dividends for public corporations and the strategy surrounding them, because dividends ultimately take money out of the business. Determining how much is healthy for the firm but enough for the investors to be happy is a delicate balance. Investor relations teams also orchestrate share buybacks at crucial times for firms, as well as mergers and acquisitions support as investment bankers underwrite them.
These employees must be incredibly well-versed in financial modeling and analysis, and often exit to equity research positions. Investor relations is quite a niche role within corporate finance, but undeniably rewarding for jobs under that bracket.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $75,000
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $50,000
Accounting is a fundamental function of any firm because recording, analyzing, and communicating information about financial transactions is crucial in maintaining a well-run business. This accounting industry seeks to maintain the ecosystem of accounting, ranging from actually recording transactions, also called bookkeeping, to a third-party checking them to prevent fraud, known as auditing.
There are numerous accounting functions, but entry-level jobs usually cover all areas relevant to them by industry. The following categorizations are generalizations, but they cover the most relevant areas in accounting and the responsibilities they entail.
Public accounting is what most people think of when hearing of accounting. This starts with the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young (EY), and KPMG. These firms specialize in offering a suite of accounting services to other firms, ranging from audit to tax advisory. Public accountants often focus on external or third-party accounting services and generally draw the most prestige in the accounting industry.
Public accounting jobs range from the Big Four to smaller regional boutiques. The job remains the same, but the compensation and prestige decline as the firm declines in size. Accounting jobs usually pay less at the entry-level, but compensation increases rapidly as you are promoted. The work-life balance is usually better than financial services jobs, but is still not ideal at the Big Four firms. However, accounting jobs at prestigious firms often position you to exit into corporate development at prestigious companies, at which point the work-life balance and compensation really pick up.
Having a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license is incredibly helpful when breaking into public accounting and becomes a necessity as you climb the internal hierarchies.
Top Employers Include: Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and Ernst and Young.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $50,000
Private accounting focuses on the internal accounting of a firm. This translates into keeping track of financial transactions and keeping financial statements up-to-date. Private accountants usually work on the steps preceding public accountants. They arrange financial information by recording and analyzing information, and public accountants then audit these findings.
The possibilities are virtually endless in private accounting because every business has private accountants, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups. Private accountants quickly develop a keen understanding of the company they work at and its industry sector, opening up numerous opportunities within the space.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $50,000
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $65,000 – $70,000
These fields are incredibly important for the workings of any asset and inventory-holding company, so essentially every business entity. Operations and supply chain management is necessary for the flow of inventory throughout any organization. It is essentially the equivalent of corporate finance, but for the execution of projects rather than the maintenance of financial records and forecasts.
Operations and supply chain management are highly relevant, albeit ignored, roles for undergraduates. Most of these positions are in the consumer and retail industries, with becoming a buyer at top firms such as Bloomingdale’s becoming a trend over recent years amongst business graduates.
The following roles are rough categorizations of roles and their responsibilities. They have internal hierarchies, ranging from coordinator to manager, but the overall nature of the role remains similar. As such, this guide explains the description of these jobs rather than the progression within.
Many of these roles overlap, but have different approaches and contributions to solving the same problems. To demonstrate, this guide uses the “last-mile problem.” Essentially, half of the delivery costs for most goods come in the last mile of the delivery. In the following roles, buyers are quite separate from the rest, but distribution, operations, and supply chain managers all have different outlooks on this problem. This example will allow us to clarify the differences between these sometimes overlapping roles.
Buyers are especially prevalent at mass retailers, but also have importance in resource-intensive industrial companies. They are responsible for evaluating vendors, negotiating prices, ordering inventory, and arranging delivery schedules. Buyers can do so for internal and external use. In other words, some buyers may be tasked to procure materials that are used in the production process for creating goods eventually sold to customers, whereas others may be asked to buy products directly linked with the eventual sale.
Buyers have more interesting job descriptions because they actively look for areas of improvement in operations, namely by scouting for better products. They do so by attending trade shows, meeting with potential new providers, and other duties, which creates a need to travel.
Buyers at large retail firms have sizable compensation, but it declines as company size shrinks. However, the retail industry at the corporate management level is not terrible for work-life balance, so employees are well-compensated on that front unlike financial services professionals.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $70,000
Distribution managers and coordinators are tasked with overseeing product storage and distribution. Essentially, these professionals are responsible for moving products and inventory from manufacturers and storage facilities to the points of sale.
Distribution management requires interaction with a wide variety of employees, but an ability to envision the transportation process from manufacturer to point of sale is especially crucial. In more corporate organizations, the steps connecting these two points are usually numerous, which requires a comprehensive distribution system. Effective distribution managers need to be able to understand each part of the process, actively seek out inefficiencies, and resolve problems.
Thus distribution management professionals must be well-versed in handling and training storage facility employees, while interacting with outside contractors such as trucking providers.
Approach to the last-mile problem: Distribution managers are actively trying to find inefficiencies, both inside and outside the organization, to improve last-mile delivery. Many of them have been trying out different delivery options. For instance, Uber has emerged as a potential candidate to tackle this last-mile issue because of the tightly interconnected and highly accurate delivery system they have developed through Uber Eats.
Distribution management is often a hidden role, which means compensation is not high compared to the flashy financial services and technology jobs, but it creates a path forward within the company’s executive leadership, depending on the performance.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $65,000
Operations management is a fairly high-level role, much like corporate development is in corporate finance. These employees are responsible for understanding the entire business process, extending from raw goods to the point of sale. They seek to maintain this flow, while actively looking for improvement areas to maximize profit for their company.
These roles can be somewhat mathematically involved and require a level of quantitative understanding. A good comparison would be consulting. Mathematics is crucial for making projections – in this case, forecasting inventories – but is fairly simple in difficulty.
Though operations and supply chain management are often packaged together in one term, they are quite different. Simply put, operations management focuses on the internal controllables, whereas supply chain management looks to control all parts of the business process that occur outside the organization
Approach to the last-mile problem: Operations managers are actively seeking out internal business inefficiencies that are exacerbating the last-mile problem. Depending on the company, this can range from the inefficient placement of production facilities to an overallocation of resources to one portion of the business. Rather than going out of the way to solve this issue, operations management employees seek to restructure internal allocations.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $65,000
Supply chain management addresses the supply process of any organization, from the point of raw goods to the point of sale. Distribution management technically falls under this umbrella, but is often treated as a separate entity because of the relative complexity of the delivery process compared to every other facet of the supply chain. However, supply chain professionals take a bigger picture view of the entire process because of their expanded responsibility, much like operations managers.
There are five generally accepted parts of the supply chain management process that sum up the entire role: the plan or strategy, the source (of raw materials or services), manufacturing (focused on productivity and efficiency), delivery and logistics, and the return system (for defective or unwanted products).
Approach to the last-mile problem: Supply chain managers would have the same outlook as distribution managers because the latter is a subcategory of the former.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $65,000
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $40,000 – $65,000
Marketing is a broad term used to define functions that create promotion for products and services for businesses. Essentially every business has a marketing function – much like corporate finance and operations and supply chain management. As such, marketing must be generalized across industries for the purposes of this guide. The following demarcations on the marketing sub-industries, thus, are generalizations and can be modified depending on the industry.
Marketing jobs in communications and public relations are more prevalent amongst humanities majors such as political science and communications, but the interpersonal skills developed through undergraduate and graduate business school are often sufficient to fill this role.
These employees are focused on creating a company or organization’s image for outside investors and the public. These roles include maintaining relationships with the press, having an intimate understanding of how the public digests information, and communication mediums. It is difficult to define communications and public relations jobs past this because of their variance by industry, but the ability to communicate is the main thing to glean from this description.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $50,000
Social media marketing jobs are incredibly prevalent at tech savvy companies nowadays, and are staples amongst marketing majors in business schools.
These jobs require a fundamental understanding of the major platforms, ranging from Facebook to TikTok. Social media marketing also has a technical side that is crucial in excelling at the job. Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial in producing web content, while other metrics such as retention rate are incredibly important on YouTube.
Social media marketing requires an acute understanding of content and the statistical side of ensuring maximum media exposure. Much of this is difficult to understand and learn because of the black-box that is search engine and social media platform algorithms. As such, many companies look for an established ability to run a successful social media page as a qualification for this job.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $40,000
Brand management refers to the long-term establishment and growth of a brand. Unlike social media marketing and public relations – which have somewhat short-term focuses for most parts of the job – brand management focuses on slowly building brand value.
There are numerous great examples of effective brand management in daily life. Starbucks, for instance, rose from another coffee chain to a premium brand people desire across the globe. Nike’s swoosh is universally recognizable. Brand management can take numerous forms, whether it be through word-of-mouth interaction or collaborating with graphic designers to improve logos. As such, interpersonal skills with a focus on establishing long-term value are of paramount importance in brand management.
There are times when brand managers do not do the outreach to other portions of the company, as well. For example, companies usually consult with brand managers before a merger or acquisition to ensure the new partnership aligns with the long-term brand value. Brand management, ultimately, is an incredibly interesting and qualitative job.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $45,000
Market research is slightly different than the other categories because it is designed to determine the viability of new and existing services and products with customers. Essentially, market researchers’ findings are used to determine brand managers, social media marketers, and public relations professionals’ next steps in any given scenario.
There are numerous types of market research, ranging from interviews to online surveys. Marketing research professionals must have a solid statistical background to excel because real-world scenarios are often littered with biases and faults.
Market research is usually done in one of two ways. Either companies do in-house market research as is the case in many technology companies. Other times, market researchers can work for a third-party firm that carries out these services for others. The film industry is an excellent example of this model. The entire industry relies on a few market research firms to make budget estimates for films.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $65,000
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $200,000 – $250,000
Quantitative finance is similar to financial services industries such as hedge funds and asset management firms. They are essentially the same, but have a different methodology behind trading and providing financial products.
This bracket of industries heavily relies on mathematics and computer science to enable financial success over traditional trading firms. In other words, quantitative finance is the new school of the financial services industry. Some of the functions, such as portfolio management, have the same responsibilities, but with a quantitative focus. This guide will not repeat the more nuanced functions, but provide general outlines for the paths a quantitative fund employee can pursue.
Here’s a simple way to think of quantitative finance: it is the quiet money that rests above the loud money in business and technology. In business, the loud money is from investment banking. In technology, the loud money is from the FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google). Quantitative finance is a quieter industry, but pays more.
NOTE: Quantitative finance requires a business and mathematics/CS background with the latter being more important. This is only an option for business majors with a quantitative background.
Quantitative traders are seen as atop the food chain of quantitative funds’ employee hierarchy – in terms of job function instead of actual rank. Traders generate revenue for their firms and have control of investors’ money, so this buy-side job is undeniably lucrative and is essentially the quantitative equivalent of a hedge fund trader.
Quantitative traders spend their time refining trading algorithms and executing transactions. Though the most prestigious role in the quantitative finance world, trading also has a high-risk, high-reward nature because poor performance can lead to firing. These traders spend their time finding investments with the best alpha, which is a market-adjusted risk measure. Traders must have a strong background knowledge of stochastic calculus, quantitative risk analysis, and a basic understanding of coding languages such as C++ and Java.
Entering quantitative trading is immensely difficult and often requires a Master’s or Ph.D. in mathematics, statistics, physics, or any other quantitative field where the candidate has dealt with incredibly challenging mathematics. However, it is completely possible to break into quantitative trading out of undergrad, with MIT and Stanford sending many of their undergraduate alumni to the best quantitative trading firms. Here, there is barely any fuss about school prestige or any other arbitrary factor as there is in traditional financial services. Instead, it is all about individual skills measured through a series of tests and interviews. So, even a high schooler could theoretically break into quantitative trading – though it is incredibly difficult to compete with PhDs for the same job.
Quantitative trading compensation is massive. It far outpaces the traditional financial services entry-level roles with people easily earning over $200,000 in their first year. Much of it is dependent on contingent compensation, but there was a Wharton undergraduate quantitative trader who made $800,000 in his first year last year.
Top Employers Include: D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Jane Street, and Citadel.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $250,000
NOTE: This is highly variable depending on performance.
Quantitative researchers are one step removed from the trading floor. They never execute buy and sell orders, but play a major role in what the traders ultimately decide to do. These researchers are usually from a purer mathematics background and breaking into this role from a business school history is unlikely and not preferred to entering a trading role.
This role is somewhat equivalent to an equity researcher in traditional financial services, but is more grounded in mathematical research and development. These employees are the experimenters in any quantitative fund, constantly looking to improve the mathematical foundations behind algorithms and, resultantly, trading outcomes.
This guide describes quantitative researcher as a potential role, but it is quite unrealistic unless you have a purely mathematical background. Trading is always a better option because it has more business school employees with mathematical backgrounds as well. Essentially, traders have a more blended role, whereas researchers are essentially academics.
Top Employers Include: D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Jane Street, and Citadel.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $250,000
Financial engineers are also called quantitative analysts at many firms. These employees are important to trading decisions, as well. They mainly use stochastic methods from their mathematical and business backgrounds.
They primarily price products sold by banks and other financial services institutions. So, the financial engineer is almost a filter between the sell-side and buy-side. A bank or institution looks to sell a product and the financial engineer prices it using quantitative methods before traders execute a buy order. Financial engineers must have a strong background knowledge of stochastic calculus, quantitative risk analysis, and an outstanding understanding of coding languages such as C++ and Java.
Financial engineers are particularly prevalent in fixed income and derivative products because pricing these offerings is quite difficult under traditional methods. Most financial engineers are Masters or PhDs but many universities are creating undergraduate financial engineering programs to capitalize on this trend.
Top Employers Include: D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Jane Street, and Citadel.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $200,000
This guide only deals with business roles, but it would be unfair not to mention the other side of quantitative trading: pure computer science and data analytics. Data scientists and quantitative developers are also incredibly prevalent and important in quantitative funds.
These employees are responsible for gathering data and creating trading algorithms alongside quantitative traders to optimize strategy and outcomes. These roles require an intimate understanding of major coding languages such as C++ and Linux, with data scientists also requiring an understanding of R, SQL, and other data science software.
These roles are also incredibly high paying and usually compete with FAANG and other technology companies. They generally pay more because quantitative trading is more challenging and exclusive.
Top Employers Include: D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, Jane Street, Citadel
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: N/A
NOTE: This is a catch-all category, so providing salary data is meaningless.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation Range: $70,000 – $130,000
There are numerous business (non-technical) roles within the technology sector. Some of these jobs are not unique to technology; for instance, treasury management at a technology company is still categorized as corporate finance. We will list the business roles that are unique to the technology industry.
Most of these roles are more customer-facing and are designed to humanize the back-office software engineers and other technical professionals. The following is not an exhaustive list, but details the most popular non-technical business roles in the technology industry.
Product management lies at the intersection of business, technology, and the user experience. A product manager is essentially the mini-CEO of a product and is given an immense amount of responsibility for a junior employee. They are responsible for setting out the long-term vision for a product, collaborating with engineers to cater the product to real users, and making business-side decisions to increase the sales of the product.
Product managers need to be incredibly interpersonal people because of their delicate positioning in an organization. They must interact with technical people, which can be difficult from a non-technical background, which is why it always helps to have some sort of knowledge of technology and coding beforehand. However, the primary responsibility still lies in ensuring the maximization of sales, growth, and a great user experience. The difficulty of product management comes in its generality. Product managers are required to interact with every step of the production process, while keeping the bigger picture in mind. On the other hand, almost every other technology role is quite specified.
Product managers are incredibly well-compensated compared to other business roles, with their all-in compensation being similar to investment banking analysts with the workload essentially being half. These technology roles, across the board, have great work-life balance, but also require a deep technical understanding.
Top Employers Include: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $130,000
Product marketing is a business-specific role in technology companies, unlike the medley that product management provides. This career involves the process of introducing a product to the market, developing long-term strategies, and generating consumer interest.
Product marketing roles are quite loosely defined in the technology industry because it is an emerging discipline that can draw inspiration from any part of the organization. In other words, product marketers can draw inspiration from anywhere within the company. Some solutions will require interaction with engineers, while others will need more direct customer interaction.
Product marketers need to understand two things: consumer behavior and how to manipulate a product to fit the customers’ desires. These are skills taught in marketing classes in college, but also need to be developed through experience in the industry.
Product marketing roles also provide good compensation, albeit lesser than product management. However, their work-life balance is excellent, as is with most other technology roles.
Top Employers Include: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $100,000
Technology sales has not historically been seen as a popular career choice for students out of undergrad, but is gaining traction once again. This field combines sales and technology and makes it attractive through the high contingent compensation.
The role is quite simple: sell technological services and products to other healthcare, business, or even individual clients. In return, the company provides the employee with a commission on the sale. As such, technology sales is almost entirely dependent on individual performance.
Due to the highly contingent payment structure, it is difficult to estimate average compensation, but having it be lower than investment banking, consulting, and product management is a good starting point. However, the trade-off comes in the work-life balance, which is excellent.
Technology sales is quite an interesting industry for a unique reason as well. Some of the client companies often pick sales representatives to join their organization in a corporate development or strategy role, creating some direct exit opportunities if candidates wish.
Top Employers Include: SAP, Cisco, Twilio, Microsoft, and Lucid Software.
Estimated All-In Y1 Compensation: $70,000
While a career in business isn’t for everyone, it is a popular choice. We hope that the options in this guide give you a sense of what the business world has to offer, and the myriad paths you can take through it. You don’t need to choose a path now, but it’s never too early to start planning for your future.
If you want to learn more about how you can prepare for a career in business while still in high school, or want help applying to business programs, schedule a free consultation with us. We have a depth of experience helping students build their profiles and apply to top colleges, and we’re always happy to hear from you.
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