Finance Careers

Finance is the Gabelli School’s most popular major and concentration. Finance is a broad field with many specialized sub-areas and many career opportunities.

Finance careers offer the chance to work with some of the world’s best and brightest in a dynamic environment. There is room to explore and grow in this constantly changing field, as well as global exposure, meaningful work, and generous compensation.

The finance recruiting process requires your attention from the very beginning of your Gabelli School career for two reasons: Traditional recruiting tracks begin early, and the hiring process for each internship or job can vary widely. The Personal and Professional Development Center (PPD) offers these services to help you:

Individual career advising

Students should use RamCentral to schedule one-on-one advising sessions with the finance career advisors. They are:

Rose Hill

  • Cynthia Bush
  • Woody Hancock

Lincoln Center

  • Eileen Casey

Individual advising discussions typically cover one or more of these topics: career options, finance areas of interest, skill development, résumé-building, interview preparation, and recruiting processes and timelines.
Advisers often work with students on a continual basis. This may mean that you meet with one career advisor multiple times each semester, a crucial “success factor” in navigating the internship and full-time recruiting lifecycle.

Workshops

PPD offers a regular schedule of workshops in career-search skills for the finance industry. Dates are posted on the GabelliConnect calendar. Recent examples include:

  • Finance info session or career fair prep
  • Finance interview preparation
  • How a financial-services recruiter looks at your résumé
  • Crafting and telling your story for a financial services firm

Spotlights

PPD’s Spotlight Series events are often finance-related. In these sessions, finance professionals and PPD staff members discuss careers in investment banking, sales and trading, commercial banking, private wealth management and asset management, research, compliance, and more.

Mock Interview Week

PPD’s Mock Interview Week includes one-on-one interview sessions with financial-services professionals and recruiters. Students who participate in mock interviews receive individualized evaluations and feedback to shed light on strengths and areas for improvement.

Corporate site visits

By heading to the offices of financial firms, students gain a deeper understanding of the industry in general and a firm’s operations and culture in particular. Site visits often feature opportunities you can’t get on campus—such as a tour of a trading floor—and sometimes even include time for networking.

Alternative investments

The Gabelli School offers a secondary concentration in alternative investments that attracts passionate and dedicated students. PPD has developed a career-development sequence, complete with individual advising, to serve their specific needs.

Résumé books

Undergraduate seniors who are completing the AI concentration may be considered for inclusion in the AI résumé book, which is circulated to as many as 40 firms and has a 100% placement rate. To earn a place in this book, seniors must achieve excellence across multiple criteria, such as GPA, Bloomberg terminal certification, soft-skills training, and relevant coursework.

AI corporate site visits

To enhance students’ understanding of what particular AI roles entail and different firms’ cultures, PPD runs on-site information sessions. Small groups of interested AI students are invited to spend a few hours at a firm’s office and hear from staff ranging from associates to managing directors, each of whom speaks about his or her role, responsibilities, and industry outlook. AI student groups recently have visited:

  • BlackRock (alternatives)
  • FirTree (hedge fund)
  • Houlihan-Parnes (real estate)
  • J.P. Morgan (prime brokerage)
  • ML (alternatives)
  • Point 72 (hedge fund)
  • RXR (real estate)

Mentor program

In the AI-specific mentorship program, students are matched with professionals across the industry, from hedge funds to private equity to real estate. The program begins each year with a professional event at the Lincoln Center campus, where students hear from industry experts on AI recruiting trends and meet their mentors.