All about my career switch - Part 1!

I’m a Chartered Accountant (qualified in November 2018, took multiple attempts) currently working with RCPL, which is an Investment Banking and Startup Advisory firm based out of Gurugram. I did 2 years of my articleship with a Big4 in Assurance, and then a year long stint of International Finance with a PSU. Post qualification, I started working with another Big 4 in Business Consulting (not Management Consulting folks!, it’s Risk Advisory). About 6 months into my job, I ended up getting a knee injury which required a surgery and prolonged bed rest wherein I tried to manage Work from home (quite unsuccessfully though). Knee rehab and work pressure took a huge toll on my mental health and after a few weeks of incessant overthinking, I decided to quit my job and go on a sabbatical to travel and figure out what I really wanted to do. And 7 months later, I’ve just started my new job as an Associate in Investment Banking.

In the article series, I’m going to talk about my journey post qualification, right from my decision to take a sabbatical to how I got this role, my experience with The WallStreet School from where I did a 6 weeks full time certification in Financial Modeling and Valuation and in general, my interview experiences and mental health during my sabbatical. This article is mostly about my experience with TWSS and TVS but I have talked briefly about how I came to the decision of enrolling for the certifications post qualification.

Taking a Sabbatical and turning down an offer

When I went on a sabbatical, it was never with the idea of getting into Investment Banking. I was honestly clueless about what I wanted to do in my career. At that point, in January 2020, my mental health was in shambles, and all I wanted was a break and an escape from reality. I started my sabbatical with a 3 week long trip across Rajasthan (with family), Goa and Gokarna (alone). During the trip, all my energy was simply focussed on being in the moment, and not thinking about work.

Right before the trip had started, I had another offer with a Big 4 in Risk Advisory which I was extremely sceptical about accepting. I knew that I did not identify with my previous role at all, I was terrible at it and felt miserable at my job. Turning down that offer, without having anything else in hand, was a very difficult decision, but sitting on a beach in Goa at 2 AM in the night sipping on wine often gives you the courage you need to make tough calls and I dropped in an email turning down that offer. At that time, I was still clueless about my “what next” and almost all of my colleagues thought that I was crazy/too bold (Again, it really helped that I did this while I was in Goa alone and not in Delhi so the external influence on my decision was very limited).

My decision to join TWSS was driven from two factors:

A)   I knew that traditional CA roles (Accounting, Taxation or Auditing) were not for me

B)   I did not want to get into Consulting

So the obvious next step was to either go for an MBA or explore a new field. I didn’t want to invest INR 30 lacs in an MBA with no clue of what I wanted to do post MBA, which is when I started researching on new roles to try. I considered trying for a Marketing Internship, or volunteering at a NGO, a career in Finance and even considered studying Psychology. I was open to all possibilities and simply wanted a role that would be satisfying in terms of the work I do. After doing A LOT of research, I decided that before I try to get in a completely different field, it made sense to give Finance a shot. A lot of googling later, I came across TWSS. I spoke to Himanshu, the co-founder of TWSS and he gave me some genuine advice about what to expect and how exactly the course was structured.

All about The Wall Street School Experience

The course at TWSS is divided into two parts : the first 3 weeks are focussed on Financial Modeling and the next 3-4 weeks on Valuations. Being from a CA background, I’d say that the initial week, I had some doubts about my decision to join TWSS, because they start with very basic stuff about Finance (mostly because their batch is extremely diverse, with a lot of engineering and MBA folks around) but as the batch progressed, the level got higher. It did take effort to understand the concept, and that required putting in a few hours every day after the session ended. The faculty is great and available to clear whatever doubts you might have. Halfway through the program, Covid happened, and the classroom training programme switched to online mode instead.

Personally, I do not prefer online classes at all, which is also a qualm I had with TWSS. Obviously, the situation was such that there was no alternative possible, but in case you have the same opinion about online mode of classes and you have the option of choosing (in post covid world hopefully), I’d advise you to prefer TWSS Classroom training program over the online mode. It’s much more effective and interactive and you’ll get to meet a lovely bunch of folks from very diverse backgrounds.

TWSS Placements and Job Search

Since my batch ended in May 2020, bang in the middle of a lockdown and Covid uncertainty, hiring almost everywhere was frozen. There were hardly any openings anywhere, and quite honestly, that didn’t freak me out then. Although it had been close to 5 months since I had been at home, I never once doubted my decision to quit my job or worried about the impending job search or employment gap. Things started looking better July onwards, when market had just started opening up again (albeit very slowly). I finally got my current role in August end.

An honest outlook on TWSS placements, the picture is not as rosy as it may seem. Some of the openings that were shared were bad backend roles with low pay. Some jobs came with very unreasonable demands of signing 1 year bonds or giving a few thousand bucks to the employer as a deposit. Then again, my perception may be biased because these openings were shared during Covid times.

There were some good openings in research side of finance - Equity Research, Valuations, Financial Modeling but those roles were few compared to the batch size. The average packages usually lie between 4L to 6L, and depending on the candidate’s profile may be up to 10L (ignoring the outliers here).

A further point to be noted is that placements are NOT guaranteed. TWSS certification is a knowledge and skill upgradation program and NOT a placement agency, and that is something one should bear in mind before enrolling with TWSS. Yes, they do provide placement assistance, the roles that come via TWSS are mostly research based or mid office roles. Yes, there are a few front end roles as well, but please note that they do require having a decent profile and there is a huge luck factor involved with respect to timing (whether a vacancy arose when you enrolled for placements). My advice would be to not limit yourself to only front end IB roles but be open to any decent finance role that comes your way. While TWSS does provide placement assistance, I strongly advise to keep applying on your own as well, over reliance is never a good thing.

I’d also like to put a disclaimer here: I did end up in a front end Investment Banking role via TWSS only. I got lucky, and I do owe it to TWSS for helping me get my foot into IB. But not everyone will end up in an IB role because of a simple demand supply rule. Front End IB roles are very LIMITED. Even in the top B schools across the country, there are 50 front end IB roles available and outside of B Schools, the chances of working with a huge brand Investment Bank are low unless you are an exception (and yes, there are exceptions).

 The Valuation School

After my certification with TWSS was over, I was not as comfortable as I had hoped in Valuation or concepts of Corporate Finance and since I had a lot of free time on my hands, I enrolled for another certification with The Valuation School. TVS also offered a full scholarship as I was part of their second batch and is in general, very economical in comparison to TWSS.

The teaching styles of TVS and TWSS are extremely different. TWSS handholds you while walking through different calculations, right from where to extract the data to which excel formula to use. And because they cater to a diverse batch of students, it’s also required. I personally felt that the concepts somewhere got a little lost in details and calculations with TWSS.

TVS on the other hand, holds 2-3 sessions per week which last for 2.5 – 3 hours and focuses more on the concepts and the rational behind them. They’ll direct you on where to find the resources, and how to go about the computation, but ultimately, it has to be you to put in the effort of applying whatever knowledge they’re sharing. The Models have to be made by you, and they’ll be happy to guide you in case you have doubts but they will not walk you through each and every excel formula. The upside is that if you actually commit to attending all the sessions and reading through the resources they direct you to, you’ll get very thorough with the concepts of Valuation. The downside of TVS is that because the program is spread over months, you have to put in the efforts to attend all the sessions, revise the concepts and make the assignment submissions as needed. It requires you to commit your time and energy to looking up the resources and revise the concepts as needed. Please note that my certification with TVS is STILL IN PROGRESS. So this review is on the basis of the few sessions that I have attended. I donot know if TVS provides placement assistance or if they do, how effective they are, so I will refrain from making any comment.

Faculties of both TWSS and TVS are genuine and don’t make any false claims. Both of them are always available to solve doubts and guide you through career decisions. I personally reached out to Himanshu (TWSS) multiple times when I was job hunting and he was kind enough to reassure and give genuine advice when I suffered multiple rejections or was in general freaked out about the job scenario. Similarly, I had also reached to Parth (TVS) when I was feeling anxious about appearing for interviews and he guided me on how to focus on knowledge improvement.

End Note

Both the schools have their pros and cons and there is a significant difference in the price point of both the courses. Whichever course you join, please join it with the primary objective of upgrading your knowledge and skillset and not treat them as placement agencies. Yes, placement assistance is part of the program, but it is not guaranteed and to hold them responsible for not getting you a job is unfair. If in case you’re leaving your job and enrolling for TWSS and TVS and wish for some more perspective, I’ll be writing about taking a sabbatical and switching careers in my next article (hopefully soon).

In case of any further queries, please reach out to me at [email protected] (instead of LinkedIn).