Corporate Finance Jobs: Cozy Careers, But Bad “Plan B” Options

Corporate finance jobs at normal companies are bad…

…if you’re using them to break into a deal-based field, such as investment banking, private equity, or venture capital, or as a “Plan B” if you interview around but do not get into one of these.

The main problem is that many people enter corporate finance jobs without truly understanding them.

Corporate finance is fine if you’re in it to advance up the ladder over many years/decades while having a reasonable work/life balance.

If you’re in it because you want to leverage the experience to move into a different field, you should stop and immediately reconsider your plans.

In my view, corporate finance jobs are not ideal “stepping stone roles.”

But I want to be fair, so I will present their positives and negatives here.

I’ll also explain what “corporate finance jobs” are, how to break in, how much you earn as you advance, and what the exit options look like:

Corporate Finance Jobs: The Short Version

This is a long and detailed article, so I will present a summary first.

If you want more, you can skip to specific sections via the Table of Contents on the left side of this page:

• Corporate finance jobs deal with a normal company’s internal finances (plans and projections, capital structure, and historical statements), and the main three divisions are Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Treasury, and Controllership.
• Depending on your group, you’ll spend time on tasks such as creating 5-year plans, conducting variance analysis, making sure transactions are properly recorded, reconciling the historical financial statements, and managing the company’s cash, cash flow, and borrowing needs.
• Recruiting is straightforward and much less competitive / time-sensitive than IB roles; you can get in coming from a solid-but-not-top-tier university with decent grades and good accounting knowledge.
• The hierarchy goes from Analyst to Senior Analyst to Manager to Director and then VP / Group Head, with at least several years spent at each level (likely 10 – 15 years to reach Director).
• Your total compensation in U.S.-based roles will start in the $70 – $90K range and advance to the $200 – $250K range at the Director level. Senior positions such as CFOs at large/public companies can earn significantly more ($500K+ into the millions) but may require decades to reach (and a lot of luck).
• Exit opportunities are mostly to other internal groups at the company; moving into deal or investment-based roles is possible but not necessarily likely. You may have more options in certain groups, such as Treasury.
• Better transition roles for moving into IB/PE/related fields are corporate banking, Big 4 TS/TAS/valuation, credit analysis, or even commercial real estate or management consulting.

What Are Corporate Finance Jobs?

Corporate Finance Jobs Definition: In corporate finance, you manage a company’s financial statements, cash, and capital structure, and you forecast and plan its future financial performance, usually on a divisional or regional level for large companies.

People sometimes use the words “corporate finance” to describe fields like investment banking, but on this site, we use the term to refer to accounting and finance jobs at “normal companies” (i.e., not banks or investment firms).

Banks and investment firms advise external clients or acquire/invest in external companies.

Everything in corporate finance is internal: You help a company forecast its financial performance, reconcile accounts, make sure the financial statements line up, ensure tax compliance, and make sure the company has enough cash for upcoming spending.

You may work with external partners, such as banks, but you do not advise them.

Instead, you hire the bank to perform a task for you, such as raising capital or providing a temporary borrowing facility.

Within a company, there are also roles such as corporate development and business development, but these also focus on external entities.

For example, in corporate development, you spend time evaluating potential acquisitions and partnerships/joint ventures with other firms.

Therefore, it is much closer to investment banking work than corporate finance.

You need to know about accounting and the financial statements in all these roles, but that’s the main similarity.

Corporate Finance Jobs: FP&A, Controllership, and Treasury

Traditionally, the main three divisions in corporate finance have been Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Controllership, and Treasury.

The high-level differences are:

• FP&A: Create revenue and expense targets for different departments, assess how close each department is to reaching its goals, create 5-year plans and forecasts, and tell the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) how the company’s Profit & Loss (P&L) Statement is trending.
• Controllership: Maintain the company’s financial statements, including receivables and payables; make sure that transactions are accurately reflected (including issues such as whether to capitalize or expense certain items); make the CFO happy while also satisfying the auditors and tax authorities.
• Treasury: Focus on cash flow rather than Net Income and the Income Statement; forecast the company’s cash flow needs and set up the equity or debt required to get the necessary cash in place; invest the company’s short-term cash to earn something on it and handle foreign exchange (FX) rate and other types of hedging.

The size and importance of these groups vary by company stage and industry.

For example, in an early-stage startup, there won’t be separate “departments”; a startup CFO will handle everything from QuickBooks accounting to VC fundraising.

At much larger companies, forecasting and planning become more important because there will be institutional investors who want earnings targets.

Treasury is more important in an industry like commercial banking (FIG) than in industrials or consumer/retail because banks constantly issue Debt and Equity and change their Dividend and Stock Repurchase policies to comply with regulatory capital requirements.

The key questions that corporate finance teams answer also vary. For example:

• Early-Stage Startup: Can we raise more VC funding? Do the investors believe our numbers and metrics like ARR and ARPU? Will the government raid our offices?
• Growth-Stage Company: How close is each group to achieving its revenue and expense targets? What Net Income do we expect over the next 5 years? Will we need to raise another late-stage growth round next year
• Multinational Conglomerate: Why did one division underperform this quarter, and how can we explain it? Can we speed up the data consolidation processes? Is it possible to use more FX hedging in one region to reduce our pricing risk there?

For more on the day-to-day tasks, please see the articles on the Corporate Finance Analyst, the FP&A Manager, and the FP&A Director.

Other Corporate Finance Jobs: Pricing, Internal Audit, Risk, Tax, and More

Besides these categories, there are plenty of other jobs within corporate finance.

For example, some groups are dedicated to pricing, internal audits, or evaluating and hedging risks (interest rates, FX rates, and even macro events).

There are also tax roles that are much more specialized than traditional Controllership jobs.

These jobs are less common, and most people start in one of the three main areas.

Finally, you’ll see “Analysts” in charge of other functions, such as working between departments to evaluate marketing spending or growth initiatives.

These are usually senior roles that require you to work in other departments for a few years, so they’re not necessarily accessible at the entry-level.

Recruiting: How to Win Corporate Finance Jobs

Corporate finance jobs are much less competitive than investment banking jobs. I will go down the list of criteria to illustrate:

• University: You don’t “need” to attend a top target school; you could win a corporate finance job from a state school in the top ~50 in the U.S. if you have a solid accounting background.
• Grades: You could win corporate finance roles with a ~3.0 GPA, while you would not be competitive for many IB roles with less than a 3.5 GPA.
• Work Experience: You don’t need 1 – 2 previous finance internships to be competitive; accounting experience always helps, but you can apply for a corporate finance internship or rotational role as your first real job.
• Timing: You don’t need to start the process years in advance; recruiting takes place much closer to the internship/job start date.
• Networking: It’s much easier to get responses to LinkedIn messages and emails because CF professionals are not flooded with student messages all day.
• Lateral Hiring: You could move into corporate finance from plenty of other fields (Big 4, investment banking, other divisions at a company, and maybe even non-finance roles).

The CPA is probably the most relevant certification, but it’s overkill for entry-level jobs, and while the CFA won’t hurt you, it’s also not the best use of time/money.

Some people use the MBA degree to get into corporate finance, but, in my opinion, it’s not worth it unless you have no other way to switch careers.

Winning interviews is not complicated: Look for online job postings, network via LinkedIn and email messages, and apply.

Expect the usual mix of behavioral/fit questions and technical questions, but the technical ones will focus on accounting and concepts like the breakeven formula, net present value, journal entries, capital structure, and hedging.

If you know the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement very well and can answer the most common accounting interview questions, you should be in good shape.

It’s worth using a site like accountingcoach.com to review all these topics from more of an “accountant’s perspective,” as we usually explain them in terms of valuation and financial modeling.

They could potentially test your Excel skills or even VBA, Power BI, Tableau, etc., but more so if you’re an experienced candidate who has used these tools before.

Corporate Finance Jobs: Hierarchy and Advancement

In most groups within corporate finance, the hierarchy looks like this:

• Analyst: Do the work and learn the ropes.
• Senior Analyst: Similar, but now you have a junior Analyst or two to help you.
• Manager: Review the Analysts’ work and “project manage” what the Director, VP, and CFO give you.
• Director: Manage the managers below you and work with the VP and CFO above you.
• Vice President (VP) / Group Head: Manage the entire team and work directly with the CFO and other top executives.

Depending on the company, there might be positions such as “Controller” or “Treasurer” that are heads of their respective groups.

The CFO sits at the top of the hierarchy and oversees all financial matters; at large companies, they spend most of their time in meetings and making decisions.

You could spend years at each level in this hierarchy, so expect 10 – 15 years to move from Analyst to Director.

Going beyond that to the Divisional/Regional CFO level might take another ~5 – 10 years, and becoming the company-level CFO will take even longer, especially at the biggest firms.

Advancement is very slow compared with the investment banking career path, as you will potentially need several decades to reach the top.

If you want to advance to the CFO level, Controllership roles are more useful at smaller companies, while FP&A roles are arguably better at big companies.

And while your abilities and results always factor in, office politics and politicking are also significant.

Even if you perform well, it’s often quite difficult to get the proper “credit” for your work or to get the right people to notice you and vouch for promotions.

Corporate Finance Jobs: Hours, Salaries, and Bonuses

The good news is that you’ll work normal hours in these roles: Maybe 40 – 50 hours per week, with spikes to the ~60-hour range in busy periods, such as during quarterly closes or 5-year plan due dates.

These spikes are more likely to occur in FP&A than in the other areas, but anything is possible, especially if your company frequently makes acquisitions or raises capital.

You don’t work directly on acquisitions, but they complicate forecasting and reconciliation.

Exact salaries and bonuses are difficult to pin down because they vary widely based on company size and industry, and specific titles are wildly inconsistent.

For example, a “Controller” at a family-owned business with 10 employees is completely different from a Controller at a Fortune 500 company with $20 billion in revenue.

A “Controller” at this 10-person company might earn $60K per year for helping with QuickBooks, while the one at the Fortune 500 company might earn $500K – $1M per year for consolidating 50 different divisions and dealing with a major audit or tax issue.

But if we consider a “mid-sized company” in the U.S., the average compensation across the main levels of the corporate finance hierarchy might look like this:

• Analyst: $65K – $85K base salary with a small bonus
• Senior Analyst: $80K – $110K base salary with a 10 – 20% bonus
• Manager: $100K – $150K base salary with a 20 – 30% bonus
• Director: $140K – $180K base salary with a 20 – 30% bonus

Sources: Robert Half Salary Data; Previous interviews; Various online surveys.

There may also be other compensation, such as 401(k) matches and stock-based compensation, especially at startups and tech companies.

At the VP level, you’ll start seeing base salaries of $200K+ with more generous bonuses, and at the CFO level, base salaries could extend up to the $300K+ level or beyond (the best-paid CFOs in the world earn $1M+ in base salary and a multiple of that from bonuses and stock).

The bottom line is that over the first 10 – 15 years of your career, in the average case, your annual earnings will go from just under $100K up to $250K – $300K.

To go beyond that, you’ll need to reach a more senior level or find a promising growth company with generous equity grants.

But I will reiterate what I stated at the top: These figures vary widely based on the company size, industry, and region.

Corporate Finance Exit Opportunities

The most likely exit is to move into a different area at your company – ideally one with higher pay and more interesting work, such as corporate development.

But you could also rotate into corporate strategy, investor relations, or other areas.

Unfortunately, exit opportunities into other industries are not great.

You don’t value companies, model deals, build relationships with investors, or advise on transactions, so you don’t develop a skill set that’s super-relevant to fields such as investment banking, private equity, or equity research.

That said, if the hiring market is good and you do a lot of networking and self-study, you can potentially win entry-level roles in these fields if you act quickly.

But many CF professionals wait too long to make the move, and once you go beyond 2 – 3 years, your odds fall significantly.

There is always the MBA route if you change your career plans later, but that’s quite expensive and doesn’t even guarantee that you’ll win an IB role.

I don’t want to be completely negative in this section, so I will note two bright spots.

First, if you work in Treasury, you might have a better chance at a broader set of roles, such as corporate banking, credit analyst jobs, or even something like capital markets (DCM) at a bank.

You do more work with the company’s capital structure, which has broader applicability to other jobs.

Second, you do get a lot of exposure to senior management in corporate finance roles, so if you’ve done well, you can get referrals and recommendations to other groups and roles, even if they’re not exactly the ones you want.

The Problems with Corporate Finance Jobs

Reading everything so far, you might have a simple question:

“OK, so what’s the problem with corporate finance jobs? Sure, they pay less than IB/PE roles, and it takes a long time to advance, but what if I just want to work 40 – 50 hours per week, stay at the same company, and enjoy my life outside work?”

If that’s your goal, there’s nothing wrong with these jobs. They’re great!

The problem is that people often end up in CF for questionable reasons, such as:

1. They believe they can use them to move into deal or investment-based roles, especially if they weren’t competitive for IB/PE the first time.
2. They had more demanding jobs and now want to downshift and give up some compensation in exchange for a more balanced life.

With #1, your skill set is too narrow for most of these roles, and recruiters and bankers sometimes dismiss corporate finance candidates because they perceive it as less demanding.

The budgeting, variance analysis, reconciliation work, etc., are quite specific to each company, and you never get this granular in advisory or investing roles.

With #2, the issue is that if you leave a deal-based role at the mid-to-senior levels, you’ll take a big pay cut when there are probably better options (see below).

Finally, AI/automation is also a risk, and while it won’t “eliminate” corporate finance jobs, it will probably result in fewer entry-level roles in the future.

A company will never replace its CFO with a chatbot, but if they can hire 5 Analysts to do the work of 20 Analysts, you can bet they will.

Superior Alternatives to Corporate Finance Jobs

If your main goal is a deal/investing role, but you are not currently competitive for them, think about all the fields that banks make lateral hires from: Corporate banking, Big 4 TS/TAS, valuation, credit analysts, commercial real estate, and even management consulting.

Anything that involves working with clients or working on deals is better than corporate finance in most cases.

For the second case, if you’ve already spent 5 – 10+ years in a deal-based role and you’re willing to accept a pay cut for a better work/life balance, you think about “deal-lite roles” instead.

For example, switch from M&A to capital markets at a bank, to corporate development instead of corporate finance, or consider venture capital.

Yes, you’ll take a pay cut in each case, but it’s a less dramatic one, and I would argue that the work itself is more interesting in most of these.

Exceptions: When Corporate Finance Jobs Make More Sense

I’ve been somewhat negative in this article, but does it ever make sense to accept a corporate finance job if your goal is to move into a more competitive, higher-paying field?

Potentially, yes.

I can think of two scenarios where it might make sense:

1. Rotational Programs – If you join a rotational program where you move around groups and can spend some time in corporate development or business development, this could be a good opportunity. If you can eventually work full-time in one of those, you’ll have a broader range of exits.
2. High-Growth Startups and Portfolio Companies – If you can join a high-growth company with a generous equity package, get a lot of responsibility, and cash out when the company sells or goes public, this can also work well and set you up for the future.

The risk with #2 is that it’s extremely difficult to tell which high-growth companies will do well in the distant future.

Final Thoughts on Corporate Finance Jobs

Hardly anyone entering IB as an Analyst wants to stay there forever; they’re using it to win other opportunities.

Even on the buy-side, few people stick with private equity or hedge funds forever; they move around, try different things, and jump between firms.

Corporate finance jobs are unique because the “hop around” potential is low, at least between different firms and industries.

You’re expected to join, stay there for a long time, and advance slowly up the ladder, increasing your pay gradually each year.

If that sounds great to you, corporate finance jobs might be perfect.

But if you want to work a lot, learn and advance quickly, and become wealthy by the middle of your career, do not go down the corporate finance route.

For example, if you want to be worth $3 – $5 million+ by the time you’re 40, this is not your career path.

You can find some outliers who have done this (usually by joining startups at the right time), but it’s more achievable in other fields.

In my very subjective opinion, most university grads would be better off doing something difficult and competitive right out of school.

If you hate it, you can always switch to an easier job – but it’s much harder to do the reverse.

And the last thing you want is to reach the middle of your career and find yourself thinking:

“Hmm… I wonder if I could have done something else.”