Thursday 19 June 2008

Can I move from a Back Office role to a Front Office role?

There have been so many rumours that seem to suggest that it’s next to impossible moving from a back office (BO) role to a front office (FO) role. If you don’t know the difference between these two check this out wiki (scroll down to the middle).

To demystify this so called difficulty that it is almost impossible to move from a BO role to a FO role, I thought I would ask the banks themselves. I sent an email to several banks and surprisingly a few replied!

This was the email I sent: Email By me. The following are the replies.

This is JP Morgan’s email reply.

This is Morgan Stanley’s email reply.

This is Barclay's Capital email reply.

This UBS’s first email, they didn’t seem to get the question! I asked the same question in a different way here and then still couldn’t give me a straight reply! Oh well, they must be suffering from the thousands of job cuts!

Please Note: All contact details and names have been removed; only the main body of the email has been used.

As you can see it is not impossible, in fact it is “do-able” and it’s nothing unheard of. All the investment banks will accept applicants that have different backgrounds and because you have worked in a BO role or any other job it isn’t a disadvantage.

Any job experience is worth having, you will only learn something from it. I guess the real test will be the way you put this across during interviews.

You may also be wondering could I move from one division to another within the same back? Again, I think it's possible but this is dependent on the bank. Your comments are always welome as usual.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

First off, I don't think the recruiting department of any bank will ever tell you that some work experience (even being a mall cop) will 'tarnish' your chances.
I believe it's quite difficult to move from BO to FO at a bulge bracket investment bank especially if you've been there for a couple of years. You tend to get branded at the IT guy or the HR gal. You're much better off working at a smaller (even a 10 person startup by some ex Bear banker) in the front office and then trying to transition.