You don't get to be the CEO of a private equity firm without seeing a few things on Wall Street.
And in an interview with finance career site OneWire, Jeff Kelter, CEO and Founder of private equity firm KTR Capital Partners says that in his time in the business, what he's seen is that the road to Wall Street glory is changing.
It used to be that you went to a bulge bracket firm (JP Morgan, Goldman... what have you) as an analyst, worked your way up to associate, then went to business school. Armed with your MBA, you could join the buy-side. And boom just like that — instant finance pro.
Not so anymore, says Kelter.
“I have kids that come see me now after graduating from college and they say I want to go through an analyst program, and then I want to get my MBA, and then I want to go into real estate. And they forget the marketing side and they forget the operating side.”
But Wall Street needs people that know marketing. It needs people that know how to run a business.
“There are a lot of people who want to do finance and not a lot of jobs,” he explains, “So sequentially, it almost doesn’t matter—if you go into marketing first and you work for a real estate company leasing space, you can check that box. Then you go to business school and you start learning the financial aspects of real estate and check that box. And then you go learn the operating side of the business. And so the sequence can be different today than it was when I did it.”
To hear how Kelter did it, watch the full interview below and visit OneWire to subscribe to the series.