Same Sh*t, Different Month
The Situation
Yet another round of aggressive networking, applications, little to no conversions for interviews and no feedback.
The one lead for a great position at a smaller firm got cancelled due to recessionary outlook. Before the technical interview... for nth time. I seriously lost count of the number of applications and times I've prep'd for a case interview that never actually materialized.
I'm convinced my chance of working in any firm in this country for strategy & operations is just not going to happen. I may just have to found my own goddamn company at this point since every goddamn firm is looking for "relevant" experience.
This bloodless, unforgiving industry is fcking ruthless with their processes and lack of sht given to candidates.
The Reason
With that impactful open - maybe even getting me banned with the new WSO moderation (sorry guys), who knows - I begin.
After unsuccessfully placing in any finance & consulting gig in my last bout, I dusted myself off, rebuilt my resume, re-applied with referrals, re-crafted tailored application packages, and re-got-my-@ss-kicked.
Most recent graduate positions in finance don't even consider me a candidate since they look for finance experience which locks me out to the whole field. Even entry level positions look for finance experience and despite me having this in internships, I have not gotten conversion due to relevance/dated internships.
As a recent graduate, I'm locked out of all new graduate consulting positions and don't qualify for many of the recent graduate positions since they look almost purely for business consulting experience.
The Next Steps
Now, I'm not so egotistic to think that I have no room for improvement in my approach, but after hitting 3-4 different walls over the past few months, colleagues and friends telling me my approach is flawless and to "just keep trying" and "the market is just bad right now", I need an unbiased second opinion.
I'm not sure if it's my resume, my cover letter, my demeanor in HR interviews, but there's something that's hurting my chances. Obviously, the economy is not in my favour, Canada (as previously mentioned) looking for perfect candidates (due to market saturation) and my resume leaning more towards technology consulting than S&O is also not a great look. I'm not an ideal candidate, but not even getting to make my case infuriates me. Even more so when external factors knock out the few leads that do convert to interviews for the 2nd or 3rd year in a row after the pandemic.
The alternative approach is to target the tech. sector and say good bye to consulting once and for all. Looking more and more likely by the day.
You should probably change your approach. This is general advice, not just in consulting or finance but in the corporate world as a whole. To be honest, a lot of positions are filled by nepotism, and you have to make a serious impression to improve your odds. I don't think it's the industry's fault for not handing you a job, it's just the way it is.
I actually worked briefly for a major finance corporation in Canada. It was not ruthless at all. Expectations were high, but people were generally kind and easy going. The difference was reaching out directly and circumventing or just supplementing standard channels of recruitment. I crushed the interview by just being overprepared and pitching a new idea, but I only got the interview because I reached out to an actual human being to stand out from the crowd.
That's the key element, networking. Being qualified is not enough, you have to connect with someone real to not just be another faceless applicant. Not saying you have to leverage nepotism or even go to networking events, although networking can help you. If your competition is nepotism, then you have to go beyond expectations and really impress someone who is in a position to make a decision.
Just my experience breaking into finance after adapting to a ton of rejections. You don't fail until you give up. Failure should be a learning experience or you will just keep failing the exact same way. If you go into business on your own, you will find that it's the exact same ordeal finding clients/customers. Trial and error.
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