Bank of England or IB/Trading

Hi,

I am in my final year of university and am debating whether to start at the Bank of England on their graduate scheme in 2019 (have an offer) or apply to investment banks for either trading or IBD roles - I am relatively confident about getting a place there.

From experience or perception, which of the options would be better for exit opportunities, future income, and prestige?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Hi,

I am in my final year of university and am debating whether to start at the Bank of England on their graduate scheme in 2019 (have an offer) or apply to investment banks for either trading or IBD roles - I am relatively confident about getting a place there.

From experience or perception, which of the options would be better for exit opportunities, future income, and prestige?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Apply to BBs and revisit this decision once you get an offer.

forget prestige focus on the role

*exit opps* are such a bad term to be applied broadly. all an *exit opp* is, is an option to move into a job with similar characteristics as your current one but in a different setting and with different lifestyle/comp setups.

prestige only comes into play when you're choosing between firms that have clear industry hierarchies because what firms do is largely similar like IB or accounting or consulting or tech. s&t and most other *performance-oriented* are different in that different firms are good at different things and your pay is mostly about how much you personally produce. for standard corporate jobs it's all about industry and size of company

so throw out the framework you're using right now to think about your career and focus your analysis on where you want to be role wise in the near future and possibly further onwards.

Thanks for the response. I think the words I chose to use were probably wrong, what I am looking for is advice from an objective perspective about future employment prospects from starting at the BoE vs. a mid-tier IBD/trading firm like (HSBC or BNP-p).

By prestige I mean employers’ view on how competitive and difficult it is to enter either the BoE or an IBD/Trading role. This is important to me because it acts as a proxy for future income/job prospects.

The reason I am asking now is because of the deadline for when I need to reply to the BoE - I would not want to accept/reject if that is not what I figure out I want to do.