Operations as in helping run portfolio companies or like office manager?
Maintaining clients records and making client statements available on portal
I did not work On investment side. I am in client services operations. It’s a back office job working on system like CRM portal system enhancements, etc.
Sounds like a Salesforce admin. 7 years is a long time to stay. When and how did you figure out it was a dead end job? Why did you stay afterwards? What do you want to do next?
It’s Salesforce super-user but certainly not admin. Have SF Admin certification though which again seems dead end job. I was moved from IT to client relations in 2013 with this role, in 2014 I realized its going to be dead end I stayed hoping there will be project management opportunities in CR. Had to stay to support family, my wife was studying. I want to get into a field with career progression. A friend suggested supply chain.
Replied to your post below, but think you deleted it... let's try it again. Most jobs are dead ends unless you switch to management track. Which dead end job would you be happy doing? Supply chain is good for scientists. It used to be good at top companies to have in-depth experience for their managers, but everything became super stats/ml focused to optimized. PhD and Masters programs are churning out more ML focused students to compete with. Look at Amazon's Operations Research Scientist / Data Scientist in Operations to see what I'm talking about.
#tldr; I was in a similar situation, 36 years old in a media company for 10 years (tech -> operations->management), liked the work and team but little growth in the last 3 years, wanted to go into ADTECH or martech, but my tech experience was too brief as the company’s strategy wasn’t focused on tech. Making the first move was the most difficult part in my experience, and might come with setbacks - I spent about 2 years “casually” looking, after a ton of rejections landed a startup gig, which didn’t pan out as promised, back to full-time job hunting for another 2 months, and finally got to a new role where I can see a good fit and growth for now. A few things I learned during the 6 months of “career reboot” - patience and resilience, and be a bit strategic with allocating time and effort: the formula I used was something like: 10% job board combing - more to study what’s out there than sending applications (which pretty much go into a black hole); 60% studying the available roles and how my existing experience can fit in - narrow the target companies and roles down to a handful, and try to get internal referrals or people to chat with in my network; 30% time try to learn something that can fill the small skill gaps. Good luck! Would love to hear others’ experience and advice on this too.
Thanks! This is helpful and refreshing
I'm currently in a similar situation and really appreciate your comments. Thank you.
Leverage networking in private equity to land front office. Thats what you studied and that's what you should focus on.
Front office is not possible unless you are from first tier MBA.
OP. Just curious, how much do you make in a role like this in a PE firm?
93
93k? In the Bay Area?
Since you work on Salesforce, do you think you can train to become a force.com developer? An acquaintance in India runs a 'Salesforce dot com consulting' outfit for global clients, maybe you could get a similar job in the US? Career growth is possible if you're selling, doing software development, etc.
Yes. That sounds doable.
Do not despair! You can leverage the PE experience and do a lot with that! Question is, what do you want to do? What’s your gut telling you?