Investment Banking Discussion Thread - Page 15

^ I delete those instantly, unless it's coming through someone I know. I also delete unsolicited emails

So are you saying it isn't worth a shot and is a complete waste of time?

I have a contact in the company but I've been leaning on him a lot. I suppose I could ask him to refer me to people that I list.

Maybe I could just bring him up in the cold email by saying something like "I've been speaking to xyz about this position and would be interested in learning more. I was wondering if you had time to discuss abc."

Though I don't know if that's frowned upon.

Yes, being referred is much better. No, don't drop someone's name if he hasn't agreed to be referred to beforehand - you're going to burn that relationship.

From my understanding, Training the Street and and Wall St. Training are pretty standard. I don't think anyone is going to be too picky about the brand name--so long as they recognize it as a legitimate course. The idea is less to replicate the training you would receive at the firm you're interviewing with and more to demonstrate a real effort to learn about the job.

I've done this myself, so I can't tell you it's stupid. But, it helps most to have some connection with the person you're e-mailing. This usually means reaching out to alumni of your school. Without any connection, the chances of your e-mail landing in the trash are infinitely greater--but, if you're desperate, I don't see how it can really hurt.

When contacting alumni, don't blatantly ask for a job interview. Ask if they'd be willing to meet for coffee to share their experiences and tell you about their firm. Of course, treat such "informational" interviews as if they are real interviews.

+100

Foo -

MBA hiring into the associate level is (from my experience at only one school) pretty robust. I've seen that (1) most people who did internships (BB, Boutique, or somewhere in between) got FT offers and (2) many of these banks are back on campus recruiting into FT people who did not do internships with them.

Most of the people with FT offers (or even recruiting into banking in the first place) were not analysts before MBA.

Also, why do you say that analyst program rollback is going to impact associate recruiting for the worse?

This is how I treat every call, and it's genuine. I'm primarily interested in three questions when I speak with somebody:

1. What do you do now and what do people you know do?
2. How did you get where you are?
3. How can I position myself to where you are if I wanted to?

Always start by asking them about themselves, try to have that be the main focus of the conversation. Ask about yourself at the end.

My resume was submitted to an analyst development program in PWM by somebody high up in their PWM division, so I'm hoping that will at least land me an interview. I interview well so I'm fairly confident if I get the interview that I'll be let in. My chances of getting into PWM are much higher than IBD/PE, too, which makes me feel better about this.

Are you talking about this year and last? From the people I've talked to in business school (Wharton, Columbia, Duke, etc.), it sounds like it has been very, very difficult to land a summer internship without previous experience as an analyst.

As for the analyst program rollback: it depends on whether you think it is endemic of reorganization or reduction. I think it is the latter. Investment banking operations at all the bulge bracket banks are shrinking. Bankers are being laid-off left and right. Look at what happened last winter. Tons of banks dumped employees right before bonuses were to be paid out. This year, even analysts are getting laid-off--sometimes first years.

So, it's not that reducing the size or length of analyst programs is going to directly impact associate hiring, but more that it is a sign of the times.

I'm not familiar with PWM at all. However, I would not be over-confident when it comes to investment banking interviews. If you've never done one, you don't know how hard it can be. Interviewers regularly try and push you to your breaking point, to see how you do under pressure. Meanwhile, you are expected to sell yourself and tell a story. All while coming across as confident and friendly.

Talking about this year only and the experience of my peers who are now second year MBA students who just finished internships. Like I said I'm only talking about one school; I'm not in touch with anyone at other schools about IB. But I could see some of this being school-specific as people tend to come in clueless and move in herds. If everyone is trying to recruit into IB internships then yeah it's going to be a bloodbath, but that was the opposite of my experience where everyone wanted to go into consulting, probably in fear of some of the trends you're mentioning. Getting an IB internship was pretty much guaranteed if you wanted one and did some legwork.

MD just told me my GPA (3.02) is under their target. I've been out of school and in the workforce for two years and am unfit to be a candidate because of grades I got nearly 1/3 of my life ago?

I know my GPA is my biggest disadvantage but you're really going to completely discount me as a candidate for it?

That's fucking stupid. Rant over.

Am i reading this wrong? 2 years = 1/3 of life?

I'm 25. I got bad grades when I was 18, 7 years ago. I never really made up for it.

MBA is nature's second chance.

Said it before already. An MBA with no experience in the field IMO is a bad idea.

If you think about how many more applications they get than they have spots, it kind of makes sense. They don't need any particular individual and it's more useful to have a simple, mechanical way of weeding out a lot of people.

To put it another way, they could fill entire analyst classes these years with only people with 3.5+ GPAs from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Wharton. Why should they spend the time and expense of looking outside of that?

I'd look into a masters in quantitative finance or accounting. I agree that an MBA isn't so useful at this point but you need another set of grades for the to consider.
Edited by Cantabrigian - 10/4/12 at 10:58am