"We are achieving a critical mass of young black bankers who are not bulge bracket quality." - senior black banker, eFinancialCareers
I saw this article in eFinancialCareers (which I've complained about before but made a small exception here) and wanted to post it here as a discussion point. Not sure how true this is, but wanted insight on this from anyone in the centre of BB/EB hiring.
I am a black man on Wall Street. I'm working for one of the top US banks in a front office role where I work across divisions and my life is not easy. Perversely, the push for diversity is making things harder for people like me.
I'm over a decade in to my career in banking and am at the stage where I hope soon to become a managing director. In theory, I should be advantaged by banks' diversity targets. In reality, I am disadvantaged by them.
My bank and other top banks on Wall Street are going all out to hire black students into junior roles. For many banks, the focus is on targeting historically black colleges and universities and former professional athletes. This is a good aspiration but in reality, many of the historically black colleges and universities are underfunded and don't attract top students. These colleges often rank outside the top 100 colleges in the US, and we find that this shows in the caliber of the people we hire from them. At the same time, the pressure on managers to make diversity hires means the interview process for black recruits can be less rigorous and we sometimes drop requirements for math and other skills.
Because of this, we are achieving a critical mass of young black bankers who are not bulge bracket quality. Many of them leave of their own accords. Many of them are moved around the firm or exited. A mentality is developing of, "We tried to hire diversity and they are not good enough or qualified to be here." Even though there's this awareness, there's no analysis of our recruitment practices. - We're so focused on showing that we're bringing in young black talent that we're doubling down and over-hiring in anticipation that many of the black hires will leave again.
This makes life very difficult for people like me. I am a top performer and I am a black man. I still face daily discrimination at work, including from my white boss who persistently ranks other lower performers, with whom he has a personal relationship, above me. I see white people favored when it comes to pay, and when it comes to promotion opportunities.
At the same time, because the firm is over-indexed towards underperforming junior black staff in an attempt to improve its diversity quotas, I am continuously having to fight the perception that I myself am a diversity hire and am less capable than my peers. I work doubly hard to counter this, but I still face the racial bias that exists at a senior level. Diversity programs are no more than lip service and it's time that banks understand that this problem is about more than flooding the lower ranks with people who they know will not succeed.
Patrick Carter is a pseudonym
Source: eFinancialCareers
Why not only hire diversities from top targets then. Increasing diversity doesn't mean you have to compromise to get to them
Just curious - if you place diversity over merit, isn’t that compromising quality for the color of someone’s skin?
Sharing quotes from a previous article regarding IB and PE recruiting:
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/comment/3223988#comment-3223988
alongside this:
i don't rlly know. I'm also writing this after a long day, but let's just say even if you pick the best investments for the portfolio on a bottom-up basis, you can still (often) introduce a lot of unintended bets into the portfolio which often times dominate the total active risk, so you need to actively control for that
There is not enough supply of quality target diversity kids which is why banks are going elsewhere causing a drop in analyst quality
That's not possible, you're saying at every Ivy League, where likely 30%+ of the kids would be considered diversity, there's not enough quality candidates to throw into a front office seat?
There has to be enough kids, I've met so many intelligent people from my class who were considered diverse who could have easily done well in finance.
I'm obviously talking about the people who want to do finance and apply so your anecdotal friends aren't relevant are they
There were definitely more than enough diverse candidates looking to work in finance from my school. I can tell you clearly didn't go to a good school otherwise you wouldn't be making ignorant comments like this lol
Depends on who is talking about USA & who is from UK
How does diversity recruiting work in the UK and / or differ from USA?
Diversity aside, literally everything about USA recruiting is radically different from UK. USA discriminates against master's students, UK accepts candidates from literally studying in every location on the planet—unlike US IB that would recruit exclusively from American universities. There are then more than enough high-quality candidates who have had much more experience (especially postgraduate students) & come from literally every corner of the world (including the African universities that place into BofA & Jefferies (with special logistical support))—it all depends on the candidates' personal wish to migrate to London. If I'm not mistaken, USA's talent pool is strictly penultimate year undergrads in USA (& maybe Ivy league MBAs to enter as associates (which doesn't exist outside US—MBAs start as analysts outside USA))
No, if you're an MBA you summer as an MBA asso and start FT as an asso in the Ldn office.
I heard that's only in very few banks
There is no world where an MBA (a proper MBA, not a scam course) comes in at the entry level of an undergrad lol, doesn't matter if UK, US, Europe. Can you imagine paying 100k to LBS to come into a bank and have your cohort be 21 year olds? No one would do that, that would be ridiculous. Yet LBS is still collecting fees.
Even if some banks don't have MBA associate programs, often they still hire MBAs (at associate) just less formally.
I'd be really curious to know what London banks would hire an MBA as associate without Big 4, PE or other kinds of related-experience (even if it's other FO roles)—all just because of an Ivy League MBA
no one calls them 'Ivy League MBAs' lol. The Ivy League is an undergrad distinction only. MBAs go by M7 or T15
Errr why are you talking about Ivy Leagues in respect of London. You realise there are European schools with MBAs right? INSEAD, HEC, LBS?
Mate literally just go on LinkedIn, do an alumni search of LBS MBAs in BBs... They are very much around.
And even if they do have related experience (and I'm not saying that all do), why is that relevant?
You can't do an MBA w/o professional experience.
Because they’re the most in demand, limited supply human resource on the market right now.
This ^^^^^ Spot on. I am also diversity (associate level) and I resonate fully with his feeling of his worth/performance being undermined by the large swaths of diversity hires done by the institutions/HR teams without fully vetting them... If you're going to go hire diversity, don't half ass it. It creates the dynamic described above ^ and defeats the purpose of increasing diversity.
Which post were you referring to?
Aw jeez I wonder why. No one could've seen this coming.
How do you know? Did you stand next to them at the urinals?
The diversity pools could include students from the top Masters programs in mathematics, physics, engineering and finance. There most definitely are enough intelligent people from these places in addition to people from top undergraduate universities.
of course they could but don't, that's what the article is highlighting
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