thommo77, in my case I went through the recruiting process for strategy consulting and corporate strategy. There are a lot of different aspects of business that I’m curious about, and I came to business school with the hopes of finding something that I liked more than finance.
I spent most of first term sitting in on company presentations and lunch-and-learns across a variety of different functions/industries hoping to find a field I was more interested in, and consulting and corporate strategy came to the forefront. I only realized after going through the entire recruiting process the things I liked / didn’t like about each field, which for me are as follows:
Consulting - enjoy the idea of helping to solve complex business issues, and working with a broad range of clients and with talented and intellectually curious people. However, I realized that I don’t like to travel for work, the work life balance is pretty bad, I’d be taking a pay cut going from private equity to consulting but also pursuing a lifestyle that was less desirable to me, and there was too much client-interfacing for my liking. I don’t have that much of an issue with client services, but iwth consulting, a lot of the job is about serving as a trusted advisor to clients but seldom being with a client long enough to see whether your recommendations are implemented. Seemed way too fluffy for me.
Corporate strategy - a very fun job on the whole because I do like the high-level work. However, I learned through the recruitment process that it’s tough to be a lifetime “strategist” – most people who aspire to get into senior manager or C-level roles end up having to go into a function more impactful to the P&L like marketing, sales, operations, etc. Since I saw myself as more of an investor than a line manager or whatever, I didn’t feel like there was a very well-defined pathway to senior ranks through strategy. Basically, I like the idea of working and growing within a company and trying to solve high-level strategy issues, but I’m simply not as passionate about actually running a business, working for a huge corporation, and managing a staff the way that some people are. I think I’m too entrepreneurial and fascinated by investing to be a good fit for these roles, at least in the long-term.
At the end of the day, I realized I wasn’t getting any younger and became increasingly accepting of the real possibility that I might not find something in the workplace that I was truly passionate about. But sometimes it’s OK not to love something, but as long as you like it enough, it can be worth it. I felt that of all the fields I looked into, finance was the best fit both with respect to my personality, background, what what I really enjoy doing.
Ultimately, I don’t want to go back to the sell-side, and I’m interested in investing in the public market and also being in the public markets. I’ve thought about going back to private equity, but probably won’t because I feel like there is too much “deal risk,” i.e. spending lots of time on a deal that ends up falling apart for whatever reason, or the risk of making a bad investment and having to stick with it for 5-7 years because that’s just how private equity works. So, that was the reason that prompted me to look into hedge funds, which is what I’m looking for right now in terms of summer internships.
Sorry about the long response but hopefully that helps - as you can see I’ve been thinking about it a ton recently because I’m debating whether I should accept one of the offers I have, or take a chance and letting them all expire in a week in hopes of searching for an interesting buy-side internship. I’m leaning towards the latter, but it’s a tough call and a bold move.