Former SAs - Did you overestimate your competition?
For those who went through summer recruiting in previous years - looking back, would you say you overestimated your competition?
I'm a junior at the moment and I think I'm grossly misinterpreting the strength of my peers. I used to envision my (future) competition as all having near 4.0s with multiple former IB internships. However, after speaking with a couple of current analysts/associates as well as seniors who have done BB summers, 95% of them were not as strong as I thought.
Maybe it's because reading WSO is distorting my perception?
/sarcasm
Yeah, I'm starting to think the same thing. I know a few people who have mad connections and have worked PE/IBD jobs the summer after their freshman or sophomore years, but on the other hand, I also know people at my school who landed BB IBD gigs after having spent their sophomore summer working as a bank teller at the local credit union.
Reminds me of the M&I article on not overestimating the competition...
fit is important
It depends I would say. Some firms will have guys that have tons of experience while some won't perhaps because they place more emphasis on fit/GPA/something that doesn't have to do with prior experience.
Depends. If you're gunning for top groups (MS/GS/BX), you're not overestimating your competition that much
Maybe in terms of applications, getting your foot in the door or whatever, but not necessarily in terms of overall quality/interview ability.
I know a few people who were SAs at places like you mention and they're not a league apart from people I know who did their SA program at other shops; they're not even slightly apart in some cases, they just landed where they did through a bit of good timing.
This is a UK perspective, and recruiting is sometimes more of a crapshoot here.
No. If you go to a target, most of the juniors you're interviewing against will have previous IB experience.
I think it's fairly rare to see Sophomore IB experience, more common is PWM or some other fin serv exp prior to IB SA.
in terms of networking, how strong is the competition? I get the gist that no one tries to talk to any of the analysts- follow up or anything. I already have 3 guys at diff firms saying they'll be gunning for me to get an interview and will help me prep. I don't advertise that at school but I did imply that I have a cousin working at an unnamed firm and I'll get interviews there. The one or two guys I told seemed surprised by this.
So what's the deal? Do people not tend to network? Are they super socially awkward?
No, most people who land offers from my school have previous IB experience. Either network or have connections through organizations/business frats, and have stellar GPA's.
I guess it depends on the schools, I think its cause im at a public school maybe?
You summer at UBS?
I never really thought about the competition to be honest.
Regardless of the truth, overestimating your competition is actually very beneficial. You will naturally work harder and be more prepared, because you think everyone else is so much better. Classical prisoner's dilemma
I agree with this.
It's in both of our best interest to think that the other person is better than they actually are. Haha Good stuff.
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