you know more or less how much you can expect to make say fresh out of college it's fine if you
just give us a range sure um did you just apply to this job online or did you have like an internal
contact did you network stuff like that yeah so i what's up everyone it's kenji here and today i'm
joined by michael a financial analyst at tesla in san francisco and he's been kind enough to share
a few of his insights on what the role is like so firstly we'll look at more of the recruiting side
so how he got the job the interview process and all that stuff and then secondly we'll
look into more of the day-to-day and what he usually does in the role so let's get into it
so michael just starting off with the basics to give the audience a bit of background
can you tell us a bit about where you studied was this your first job and so on
yeah so i studied at cornell university um graduated in the middle of 2021 um and then
shortly after i worked at tesla as a financial analyst um during school i did an internship with
cushman in wakefield during the summer and then actually extended it during a gap semester okay
during the covey times to work there as well and just going over the more of the the recruiting
side of things did you just apply to this job online or did you have like an internal contact
did you network stuff like that yeah so i did a little bit of both um there was a posting online
and i also did some some research via linkedin and i found someone who was a high school alumni
okay the company and then i also did more of a cold reach out to someone i didn't quite know
who was more who was working on a team that i was interested in um so i did sort of combination of
both and reaching out to those two people to sort of get my foot in the door and learn more about
the role the company et cetera so when you say you reached out was this like you just send them
an email randomly or try to connect a few things with them yeah so um with the high school alumni
that one was a bit easier yeah we could start with some commonality and then just sort of work
our way from there um and then for the person that i didn't quite know it was a more formal reach out
but still just a cold message over linkedin saying hey you know i'd like to learn more um could we
perhaps get on the phone okay so they were kind enough to reply and that kind of worked for you
basically yeah yeah has that been the case in the past or for other internships and things like that
does it usually work when it comes to cold emailing and networking like that yeah so i
would say you know you won't get a response from from everybody because there's some people who are
quite busy but you'd be surprised by the people who do respond to you and you know if you reach
out to enough people um and you keep going at it you will get some responses yeah fair enough
that's great to hear i mean i've emphasized this in the in some other of my videos so yeah make
sure you give it a try especially when it comes to cold emailing at the end of the day it doesn't
really cost you anything right it's just free to do and well maybe they don't reply but that's it
nothing wrong with that and as for the actual interview itself what was that like yeah so
thinking back to my interview obviously during covet times it was a little bit different um but
it started with one or two interviews that were more behavioral you know they asked questions like
um you know what are your strengths and weaknesses you know tell me about your resume
why are you interested in the job etc um then shortly after that they actually did a 30-minute
excel test okay um so that was you know somewhat intense but but more straight to the point in
testing to see if you can use excel you know understand some financial accounting concepts
um then after that there was maybe one more behavioral interview followed by a final round
interview which is maybe four or five people back to back on 30-minute interviews um where it was
you know somewhat intense where i would say maybe three or four of those interviews where maybe
excel case study tests that you had to sort of share your screen and sort of do the exercise with
them and just sort of come up with some insights on a little case study here and there yeah
and speaking of excel stuff we actually have one big announcement which is that we've released our
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we have case studies that replicate the type of work you might be assigned in your day-to-day
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so in your case you got this job basically fresh out of college but was that the case with most
other analysts or did they have previous experience either at a bank a consultancy
or a similar type of company yeah so it's kind of hard to say but for the small team that that
i worked on um i was pretty much the only analyst that came fresh out of college okay most of the
other senior analysts had you know some experience in banking or some consultancy one might have had
like internship experience at tesla and then converted that into a full-time role and then
most of you know the upper positions and the associates and managers had experience elsewhere
as well and when it comes to the other candidates so the people that also interviewed with you or
they're mainly like ivy league types or were they really from all over when it comes to education
yeah so that would be also hard to say because i interviewed during covet period yeah so i didn't
really get to meet many of the other candidates but i'd say based on the resumes of most people
there i think there's a good mix actually you know there's there's some representation of you
know ivy leagues or some elite schools and then there's some who come from you know state schools
or very very um standard schools as well and you can't really tell the difference actually and they
all really perform at that high level that's that's great to hear so michael moving on to
the actual role for people that might not really know what does a financial analyst do right so the
the label financial analyst is quite vague but i'd say yeah the financial analyst tasks can be quite
role specific in terms of my experience i found myself updating maintaining and revamping a lot
of forecast models in addition to that you might find yourself approving a lot of purchase requests
for new developments relocations expansions things like that and you find also quite a bit of side
projects ad hoc analysis anything really just to support the business um and things along those
lines makes sense and as for the company's culture like from the outside it seems like it's very
hyped up and it seems like quite an intense place what's it like from the inside view yes yeah so it
is pretty intense you know very high pace um and a lot of really lean teams right um you're not gonna
have you know a ton of people on a team covering a small amount of work um you know you're going to
have you know quite a lot of responsibility and even as a as a fresh graduate you know quite a
lot of responsibility and quite a bit of impact um on the company even from you know just financial
models to specific purchase requests every little thing counts um and so yeah there's a lot of work
to be done but it's definitely a great opportunity and great exposure to a business in a really you
know fast growing field makes sense makes sense and can you give us a bit of context as in how
many actual hours you might be working in a day or in a week yeah so i would say that is also pretty
team specific pretty role specific right um but from my experience i'd say you know you'd wake up
maybe eight closer to nine sometimes a little bit earlier if there's a big meeting that needs to be
put on the schedule for a lot of people then you work your way through the day
maybe get close to dinner finish dinner and then finish up a few tasks after dinner and
sort of end it there so maybe around what 12 hours maybe even 14. um you could get some longer days
and then you can have some shorter days as well kind of depending on you know how things go you
know if you have an important deadline on certain week um or maybe you know you might
find yourself catching up on um a few things here and there but yeah maybe something along
those lines how about how about weekends were they usually protected you would be working so i'd say
for weekends um definitely a lot lighter you know you might find yourself doing a few tasks here and
there here and there to to catch up or to you know just start on a few things a little early
to give yourself a little bit of a buffer for the following week following week but uh yeah i'd
say weekends it's pretty pretty light yeah if it makes sense make sense and i know you might not be
able to answer this question but i feel like the audience really wants to know about this one but
you know more or less how much you can expect to make say fresh out of college it's fine if
you just give us a range sure um i think with the base pay and the equity compensation okay
um you're definitely going to clear the 100k mark okay now with equity that's kind of
um some compensation that has to vest and you know the value of that compensation kind of
changes over time depending on how the stock price sort of moves how many series yeah something like
that maybe um but yeah so now that the stock price you know has moved up you know quite a bit since
um last year and the year before you know trying to measure up that type of compensation is kind of
in a gray area i guess you could say it makes sense makes sense and for people that are actually
in this type of a role today what kind of exit opportunities are they looking at or they really
try to stay there for the long run um so i'd say that there's probably a mix um you would
have you know quite a few people you know trying to build a long long-term career at the company
you know work their way up to associate managers directors and so on and so forth um
and you really go down that cfo track i guess you could say um and then there's there's some
who leave um there's some who start their own thing there's some who move on to investments
maybe an investment firm asset management type firm um kind of wherever i think that they can
apply their skills that they've learned there and and go forward yeah makes sense makes sense and
so for people that are maybe either current students or working professionals aspiring
to break into this kind of a role well what advice would you give them sure yeah um i think
technical skills are a good way to go about it um to make yourself you know a marketable candidate
right um i'd say excel is definitely a must that's kind of the reason why we made this course yeah um
and then you know after that i think some nice bonuses are sql you know some data
management tools power bi maybe a little bit of python if you really want to go the extra
mile yeah and then on top of that maybe some financial accounting courses finance courses
things of that nature and for people that are currently in university are there any courses that
you would recommend that they take maybe you took in the past that you felt were really valuable
yeah so i would say um a lot of the excel oriented courses right um at cornell we had some financial
modeling courses some investment modeling courses things of you know on that sort of scale that was
really helpful um in addition to that you know financial accounting courses yeah um general
investment courses are really nice and then um to go back to so more of the the technical skills
i'd say um something like python or maybe like a small statistics class would be very helpful
as well and did you do you find yourself often using powerpoint as well is that something that
you use on your day to day or not really yeah i'd say powerpoint is definitely a solid tool
um to have on your tool belt just because when you communicate with upper management or bigger
parties um internally that's normally the way you sort of go about it yeah makes sense those
are questions that i had prepared for michael feel free to drop some in the comments if you have any
questions specifically for him he'll be looking out for that as well feel free to check out some
of these videos over here on excel for finance if you want to level up your excel skills or
this other free video on discounted cash flows if you're interested big thanks to michael for making
this happen hit that like hit that subscribe if you enjoyed it and i'll catch you in the next one