Calling an MD

Harrison, I'll take your finance internship if you want to give it to me.

LOL

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calling that MD is the worst idea ever

I just got off the phone with an MD from Duff & Phelps, Joshua Benn, seems like a good group of guys from the few brief encounters I have had with their NY team. I would advise against contacting an MD directly and contacting anyone at the firm other than HR will most likely not get you anywhere. Sit tight and wait it out...

I don't get it, if he has the balls to call him up and if he's a smoothe talker or sounds good on the phone, whats the problem with calling an MD.

A week and a half? A week and a half? Give it a break man, you need to give them longer than that. They aren't sitting by their computer downloading every new resume and screening them immediately. When is the deadline? Don't contact them before this.

The problem is that an MD has more important things to do with his/her time than speak with a random student about a summer internship. The MD most likely has no idea they are hiring for that position to begin with.

I actually spoke with one of the MDs at Duff & Phelps and as smooth as I was, which is pretty damn smooth, never got past the "I will get back to you." I was referred to him by another MD in the area and DP was going through there IPO and a lot of things were shakin...yet no offer no nothing.

Now that I am working, and I see the potential monkeys reaching out to the MDs here and the way they view cold calls and cold emails I would recommend trying to get an analyst or someone below the MD level to get your voice heard.

Last week, one of the MD's had a MBA student email him saying he will be calling him at 11:30 for a chit chat session. He was telling the MD that "he" would be calling him on his terms. As a monkey who did everthing except S the D for a job during this downtime, I don't think calling the MD will get you much further. Reach out to the junior level first...Good luck.

Don't call MDs unless they tell you to call them

I second Nystateofmind.

I'm from a non-target - spent weeks trying to get a Goldman MD on the phone. 4 weeks later - I spoke with the guy for 30 min, and had an IBD interview the next day. Guy was nice, and more importantly, appreciative of my persistence. Those 4 weeks involved becoming best friends with his assistant, who essentially made it possible.

There is a fine line between pissing someone off, and being persistent, though. I would not call every 30 min or something, as you will piss off their assistant.

I spent a week calling a group head at Laz/Greenhill/Evercore - never got through, but the guy finally sent me a nice email and whatnot. Considering this guy reported to their CEO, I'm surprised he even took the time to write an email, but he was really nice and left the door open for FT recruiting.

Like NYstate said - it's up to you. From a non-target, you don't have much to lose, unless you really piss someone off.

Nice job Walter. Did you end up getting the GS position?

I just got an email from someone i cold-called last week who works in my ideal city (which Ive been told is hard to break into without a contact), very surprised he actually replied politely.

Have no shame. You cannot have shame or be shy if you want to break into banking/finance, especially coming from a non-target.

Honestly, calling people is also the best way to get results in general... email is very easy to ignore, phone calls less so.

What do you have to lose? At the very least, they'll admire your persistence a la Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox, and at the very worst you won't get through to them.

Personally I would be impressed if someone kept calling me and did everything possible to get my attention. Although I'm not an MD so take this with a grain of salt. :) \

Another suggestion, try and calling a MD from another department. You might be able to get through to the department you want in the end.

I got nothing to lose. I have a finance internship at a BB. if he doesn't respond or thinks i'm retarded, then they'll lose one awesome intern.

haha

i will call. ill let you guys know how it goes.

i agree, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. the worst that will happen is he will hang up on you and/or never call you back

I dont think you can get through to an MD unless it is a warm lead. If you are going to call MDs its a shot in the dark as to whether or not they are going to think you are an idiot. Its important to realize that everyone is different and if you are going to try a strategy like cold calling (which has a low success rate) then you are going to have to do it with tons of MDs and not just one if you want to maximize your success rate. I never cold called but i sent out resume/cover letter portfolios to 100+ MDs and dept. heads at various firms and got maybe 3 call backs from that. My buddy knows this guy who drew and outline of his foot and wrote 'thanks for helping me get my foot in the door' on it and sent it to an MD at GS with his resume and cover letter and got a call back. I though that sounded pretty ballsy but point is you never know how people will react.

Mez - Unfortunately I didn't get far in GS interview process. Despite getting dinged, it was a good experience, and prepared me for other banking interviews.

He was in a meeting. I left a voicemail saying I'd follow up.

How long should I wait to call again? Friday?

Friday late afternoon is good.

I really do not see what the big deal of calling an MD is. Some of the above posts have refered to "MD" as like a god or something. I know from personal experience that cold calling works, especially in the cut-throat ib world.

Think about it this way...say you have a 5%chance of getting hired based on calling an MD. If you call 20 of them chances are you'll get something. Even if the odds were 1%, call 100 MD's or VP's or Analysts... The best person to call is the Talent Acquisition Department. Granted I come from a 'target' school (not ivey-like though), cold calling helped alot!

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After getting dinged from a bunch of first round on-campus interviews for several BB's main SA programs, I decided to start making some cold calls directly to the groups I wanted to work with. Actually found the majority of these numbers buried a bit on their websites.

Most were dead leads from the start; the first response from another was that they had just finished interviewing interns the previous week. I insisted that I just send my resume anyway, though of course HR made no garauntees. Shockingly, no more than 2 hours later I got a call back. One of the things they liked most was the initiative to find and express interest in their group specifically.

Long story short, I've now got a SA position with a BB that I never would have had otherwise. BTW, I'm from a semi-target.

Thanks Monito.

Obviously B2 does not understand 100/20= 5 or that 100/100= 1. Someone please teach him fractions.

um...i agree that b2 didn't need to bring it up and is generally an asshole, but seriously giocatoredoro, don't start being condescending. because b2 was right, you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're just making yourself look stupid.

100/20 may equal 5, but that has jack shit to do with probability.

it's more like a 65% chance with 20 shots on 5% each.

just when i thought we had prevented a fight of derogatory comments...

xqtrack, explain the 65% to me..? If you use excel's random number generator and put in values 1-20 and you run 1000 trials... most number will occur 50 times, of course some will have occured 45 or 55 times, but most will converge to 50.

In my original post I stated that if we assume a 5% 'hit' then by contacting 20 MD's you might have a job (it may take 15 calls or it may take 25, however by probability alone it will most likely take about 20 calls).

Perhaps this is clear?

giocatoredoro - that's not how probability works. You have to assume that each case is not dependent on prior cases. This is why even though a coin flip has a 50% probability of being "heads", you can't guarantee that flipping twice will yield at least 1 instance of "heads." Similarly, if each MD has a 5% chance of giving you a job, there is no guarantee that asking 20 MDs will guarantee one job offer.

I must admit, my statistics abilities are pretty rusty, so I don't really remember the exact way to do this. 1-((1-.05)^20) gets you to about 65%, though I can't explain why that works. Hopefully xqtrack can explain it better than me.

the probability doesn't matter. start calling! the more peopel you call, the better your chances of at least getting an interview will be. i go to a non-target for sure and have been cold calling md, vp, assoc., anyone i feel i can talk to about a related subject. i have 3 interviews at decent boutiques in nyc coming up in the next 2 weeks and still waiting to here back from a couple more. start calling and good luck!

back on topic: OP, any luck with getting in touch with the MD?