I made a lot of progress this week in ISM. I was able to complete one research interview and schedule two more.
On Thursday, I completed my first research interview with Mr. Vamsee Ravella, who currently works as a private credit investment analyst at AllianceBernstein. Because I didn’t have a very good idea of private credit, I made sure to briefly explore the topic before going into the interview. I thought this interview went pretty well. I asked multiple insightful open-ended questions related to private credit and was able to learn a lot about the topic, which is beneficial for me since financing is a significant component of corporate finance. However, I was a little nervous because it was my first interview of the year. I still think I did a good job of having professionalism and expressing my enthusiasm.
After having no success with networking on LinkedIn and my e-mails being left with no response, I decided to cold call two financial professionals. Thankfully, both of them picked up and agreed to do an interview with me. One of the professionals is a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, and the other is a CEO of an M&A firm. These two successes have built my confidence in cold calling.