Is there a difference in the difficulty of acquiring a F500 finance analyst position compared to IB?
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Not in industry, looked into this a bit though. Take what I say with a grain of salt.
What do you mean by easier? As far as behavioral interviews go, they're looking for someone different (they don't need people who will crank for 80 hours+ every week). For technical interviews, they will be much simpler from what I've read.
If you're talking about finance leadership development programs, the resume they look for is almost identical, though a 3.5+ GPA isn't necessary (a good idea to have, though).
This also HUGELY depends on the company. Some companies will have target schools similar to investment banks (this is rare and usually, from what I've seen, they tend to be F100 or growing in a "sexy" sector). A lot of the companies recruit from top schools in addition to solid regional schools near their headquarters/hiring office.
For an F500 that doesn't OCR at your school, you can online submit your res, but it's probably better to try and get in touch with someone you know at the company or cold-email and network. HR can sometimes be iffy on the resume screens and there's a better chance of getting an interview if your res is passed along by an employee.
Once again, I don't have firsthand experience with this, so make sure you double check. The most important thing to keep in mind here is EVERY company is different. Networking (cold calls/cold emails) is still probably the best way to get interviews.
IB is much more network/prestige/target school driven, IMHO. As someone who has done alot of hiring for my teams at 2 Fortune 100s, I can tell you that at least in my case, our needs tended to be more skill based; we care about the quality of your internships and direct work experience. School prestige is nice but let's face it you're going to be a peon. That being the case, we'd rather pay you less than more. Also, my experience at those 2 places led to many calls from headhunters and recruiters from other fortune 50-100 companies, and I certainly didn't attend any target schools. The premium was on my ability to hit the ground running and jump into day to day tasks.
If you've got solid internships or work experience on your resume by the time you graduate, you should at least be able to get F500 interviews either via resume drop on campus, recruitment fair on campus, or through a staffing agency.
Both of the above are mostly correct for my F500 as well.
DM is correct that we have target schools for FLDP, but you can get a job even if you're not from one of the Targets. However, we do place a pretty heavy emphasis on GPA and extra curriculars. You definitely can get hired without a 3.5, but I'd say most of our FLDPs are 3.5 or better with quality ECs.
Similar to what TheGrind says, I think we look for people ready to hit the ground running a lot more in our experienced hires or even FAs. However, we're willing to take a little more time with FLDPs because they're seen as relatively high potential employees.
It's still competitive, I don't think anyone with under a 3.5 got interviewed for my position. (I'm at a F1000 ~4B annual revenue) We don't hire that many college hires every year (maybe 5-7) so the positions tend to be pretty tough to get. On the other hand, prestige isn't really that much of a factor. There were kids hired for the same positions from my school, which was a third-tier non-target, as the kids hired from Top 50 universities.
So, I would say if you have a good resume in a relevant degree, (accounting/finance/econ/MIS), you can get hired. But relevant internship experience is huge, i think the fact that I had solid extracurrics and a decent internship was really what won me the offer.
Why does it matter?
Not only a good resume in a relevant degree works but your skills into it also opens a better opportunity to rise!!
Getting a F500 Job vs IB (Originally Posted: 10/06/2010)
Guys would you say for a graduate that getting a position in a boutique IB firm would be harder than a job in a F500 going for analyst.
Depends on the Boutique. Generally I would say no unless your applying to a decent boutique like Greenhill, Evercore, Lazard, Moelis etc
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