Need some answers! Thanks.

What is investment banking about and what are the requirements? Also what is a data analyst and what are the requirements? Please make the answers as understandable as possible! Thanks


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I don't think I'm qualified to answer this because I haven't applied for main investment banking before but generally how I like to see it, investment banks are firms that make money from assisting corporations in business activities, like mergers, stock sales/trades etc.

Now investment banks have various different departments, usually dubbed offices; front, middle and back. Some people like to assume that front office>middle office>back office but I know that this is not the case, at least salary wise.

By unqualified, what I mean is I've applied for technology internships (technology is usually back office, starting salary typically 38-60k starting, depending on location and experience and a range of other factors, but believe me when I say banks pay better than most other kinds of firms). Technology requires a technical degree like maths, computer science, physics or the engineering degrees, and there's usually two pathways to go through, application development and infrastructure engineering. General investment banking usually requires you to attend university at a top Russell group university, one of the G5 preferably.

Application development is usually developing back end tools for the bank to use in the usual programming languages (C++, Java, Ruby, Assembly). This usually requires that you have prior experience to programming, where you're an expert in at least one of the languages the bank uses. This doesn't mean you have to get a computer science degree, although that looks great on any application for a technical job. (again university matters, they'll be able to see what you did in your degree, and computer science degrees vary in difficulty across universities).

Infrastructure engineering is usually implementing hardware methods to be able to run the software that banks need now a days, so typically you'll be creating and managing server farms, parallel computer farms and even installation of computers where needed by the bank employees. This isn't your average computer installation, both hardware and software are highly proprietary usually and require you having sound understanding of how the bank operates it's technology. Electronic engineering degree would look great for this, but the other technical degrees are fine too.

General comments about university, you'll need to be predicted a 2:1 almost all the time, attend all the careers events related to a bank you want to work at and make sure to apply for spring and summer internships properly, not rushing your application because you think that they won't notice, it's their job to notice. Competition for jobs at investment banks is fierce and you really need to be at the top of your game to get through. Banks are usually second to just magic circle law firms when it comes to deciding what university they recruit from, so be careful when choosing. I wouldn't wanna sound cocky but I really don't think you should waste your time applying if you're studying Business and IT at Craptown Met, because you will just look plain stupid compared to your competition unless you're extremely good at what you do and you can put this through your application.

The work ethic and atmosphere at a bank is probably the downside to it all, practically everyone at the bank is a workaholic, often grinding 100 hour weeks to keep up with work, but investment banks offer an attractive 4 weeks of paid leave a year, which you can practically take whenever you want. Women in banks is something they're improving on currently because men dominate the women population and the women resemble the same charatistics as the men. Totally unproven, this might be why people leave banking after 3 years. Rule of thumb here is to keep your work life and your love life separate, don't ruin a job opportunity like this over a female.

I hope I reasonably explained what investment banking is and I would be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.

General investment banking intrigues me the most... Good pay, but the work environment and the 80+ hours a week has really demotivated me to go into banking... I'm in my last year of GCSE's, i wanted to go into the field of Investment Banking... What does it consist of in a normal day? Briefly and simple. Checking markets and where businesses should invest? And why does it take 80+ hours !! That's too much