Career Tips for Finance Professionals

Good business networks can not only help you get a job but they also can help you advance on the job, said Janae Lefrore, ’04, vice president of global risk management for Bear Stearns. “You often hear in the business arena that it’s not what you know but who you know,” Lefrore said during the junior panel at the Road to the CFO Conference, sponsored by the student-led Financial Analysis and Treasury Group, at Hyatt Regency Chicago October 19. “But what I’ve found surprising is that who you know also has a lot to do with how you perform on that job once you have it.”

To do her job, Lefrore often needs input from different groups within her company, such as market risk or credit risk, she said. “In asking for certain things of people who don’t necessarily know me, they’ll call people who may have graduated from the program I graduated from in Bear Stearns,” Lefrore said. “I would not have been able to do my job quite as successfully as I have if I didn’t have that network.”

In the corporate world, finance officials must deliver quality work and maintain a strong social network to gain credibility, said Margaret Castrovillari, ’00, CEO and CFO of Soulistic Studio and Spa. “This is especially true when you’re working on merger and acquisition projects,” Castrovillari said. “You’re in a sensitive situation because you’re acquiring the target and the target, employees are usually very skittish about their long-term prospects.”

Volunteering to mentor a curious young employee, in addition to an assigned protégé, was beneficial in several ways for April Park, ’06, finance director for Sears Holdings. “That experience was great because I got to work on my own management skills without having any direct resource to do so,” Park said.

Park’s Good Samaritan work brought her unexpected karma at another level. “It turned out she had all the connections with senior executives at the company,” she said. “By helping her, I end up with connections to the senior executives, because she made sure to pass along every positive word about me and what I did to help her.”

Goal setting is important but MBA job seekers must remain flexible about opportunities as they arise, said Sridhar Manyem, ’05, risk management consultant for Nationwide Insurance. “You need to be really clear that you’re not working backwards from a title,” Manyem said. “Your goals need to be more aligned with what kind of responsibilities you want, as opposed to, ‘I want to be a senior vice president three years from now.’ It should be more like, ‘I want to be managing an organization.’ That way it will be much easier on you.”

MBA students should search their souls to determine exactly what they want to do, said Chandra Goss, ’05, senior financial analyst at PepsiCo-QTG. “This is something you’re going to be spending a lot of time on for the rest of your life,” Goss said. “Knowing what you want to do and doing something you can be passionate about is important. Don’t get nervous and take a job you don’t want. I know a lot of classmates who did that and were not happy. You’re from the GSB; you’ll get a job you really want and can be passionate about.”

Panel moderator Damon Phillips, professor of organizations and strategy and Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow, suggested MBAs create a special savings account, in case they take a job with which they are not happy. “Sometimes we advise students to have a ‘go to hell’ account,” Phillips said. “The amount you have in it is inversely proportional to how confident you are in maintaining your particular career track or firm. This is money you set aside so if you want to switch, you’re not constrained financially.”

- Phil Rockrohr