No Third Year - What Do I Do Now?
I'll save you the sob story but I was just told I won't be getting a third year offer at my current EB, but can stay until the end of July. I'm still a bit shell shocked but had a few immediate term questions:
1. Do I tell recruiters / prospective employers about the situation?
2. How much work should I expected to be staffed on during this time, and should I focus 100% on networking / applying to other jobs?
Has anyone else been in this situation? What did you do? Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
That sucks. NY office?
(1) Tell the recruiters/prospective employers that you are interested in moving to a firm where you could see yourself excelling as an analyst and eventually moving into an associate role (other EBs). You can tailor it as you see fit, but indicate why you want a different experience than your current EB. Banks lose analyst all the time for various purposes (burnout, job opportunities outside of finance, b-school, lateraling) - positions will be open.
(2) I saw this over the summer, and the analyst was staffed with a lot of busy work but very little that was client-facing. In example, preparing documents for internal risk committees.
(3) Figure out why you are not being offered a third year and take meaningful steps to improve it while you are still at your current firm. Step into your next job on the right foot.
Good luck.
Thanks, great advice. Yes it was the NY office. Would you recommend going to another bank at this point or trying to jump to the buyside / tech start ups?
I think that is up to you. One of the things I always consider is how many options do you keep open by making decision Y versus decision X.
If you are considering business school, I think tech start-up/corp strategy would be a more enticing story to admissions committees. I.e., "I loved working in XYZ industries as an M&A analyst, but I wanted to make a more meaningful impact within one of the companies, so I moved to corporate strategy at ABC Co."
If you want buy-side, go for it, but at this point if you don't have a gig locked down you may find fewer "top" options. Going from an EB to a significantly less competitive buy-side gig may not portray the most attractive story should you choose to go to b-school later down the road, or want to lateral to a better buy-side opportunity. I'm not sure if you already went after buy-side opps, either.
If you need more time to decide, lateraling to another EB would give you time to figure out what you really want to do while still maintaining a wide array of options (2 more years, get promoted to associate, apply to b-school OR continue to seek buy-side opportunities).
Just my lowly opinion. I'm sure someone in high school with 500 bananas will come along with much more perspective than I can lend.
July is 4 months away since it's the beginning of March. I would start hitting the ground with any opportunities you're interested in as soon as possible. I would try to work hard to secure offers earlier than later because people will ask why you're in a rush to leave. They may put 2 and 2 together, but you could always spin it and say it's because of changes in management, work product, you got moved to a different group, no longer interested in the work, etc. When you no longer work there you have significantly less leverage since you have no job. That can be spun as well though if you start interning/volunteering at a startup, that can lead to an opportunity as well. I would be pretty much entirely focused on networking though. Submit decent work product since you're still on payroll, but don't go above and beyond; you're leaving at the end of July no matter what.
Am I missing something here? Submit only the minimum that is expected that won't get you bad review/in trouble. You want to keep them content to use them as references, but find the minimum to keep them content and do nothing more IMO... Start looking for new opportunities during downtime at work. Are they giving you any type of departing package? Are you getting your bonus??
Try and find out the areas you need to improve for your next opportunity. Ask your associate for advice on where to improve if he/she is willing. If not, find somebody at the firm you have worked with enough that can give you feedback on why they don't want you and what you can do to improve as an employee.
Nope. What you said is fair. I was basically don't get fired too soon because he knows he's leaving and couldn't care less about the group at this point.
Just my 2 cents but your reputation is everything in this industry - I would not "do such shit work that they stop staffing you".
You're much better off having a frank conversation with your VPs / Ds asking them what you can improve and even ask them to help once you've identified if you want to stay in banking or go buy-side / corp fin. I've seen it happen
Note however that the window from banking to PE is quite small and you're right now in that sweet spot of still being junior but with good experience so this whole thing may be a blessing in disguise as it can push you to shoot for PE now (if that's what you want)
You know there is only one answer...no prestige, no banking, its basically going to be impossible to to be successful in any capacity in life from here on out. Just buy a bottle of Jack and a .357 magnum...you know what to do, its all over.
This is a VERY bad time on the street... There are a lot of banks/groups cutting and not offering 3rd years.
Also most/all banks at this point are on hiring freezes with HUGE incoming classes and huge intern classes. it is going to be a VERY VERY bad year on the street and I expect that analysts are going to start getting cut early if things don't turn around over the summer and new kids hit the door
What the.... as an incoming summer analyst, this is worrying. What do other people think?
We will see
I think most, if not all, of the BBs will have anticipated much of the downturn and have taken this into account when filling summer classes.
Or maybe they didn't, and return offer rates will be 50%. Hopefully this is not the case...
Not offered a 3rd year analyst role..what next? (Originally Posted: 05/12/2016)
Due to the shifty environment i was not offered a 3rd year analyst role at my BB. Instead, i was told that "my program is ending in the summer." They have given me a few months to search for a new job.
Has anyone gone through something similar? If so, what advice might you have, and am I entitled to any compensation since this is technically not a layoff?
Thanks,
That's definitely true. However, it seems like a lot of banks did their recruiting in the Fall this academic year when M&A markets were great. This year, it's a different story with regulation creeping in on inversions as well as just decreased confidence in future M&A activity.
The structural problems were already there and some banks were publicly already announcing cost-cutting even in the fall. I would assume that as GS didn't just have a shitty quarter out of the blue and already knew that it had to shrink costs before this... again, hopefully. lmao
Dude it is bad.. Hiring freezes everywhere with big incoming classes and very weak deal flow. Associates and VPs are getting let go.. Analysts aren't getting 3rd years. They are trying to scale back so they don't have to cut further but if the current trend continues it is going to get worse.
Don't believe you'll be offered anything as you're technically on a contract. Would just take this time to reach out and network so that you can land somewhere in the fall. Other alternatives are obviously an MBA if you have any interest or transition away from banking. Don't mean to be callous during a bad time for you but did others get return offers? Perhaps you weren't on track or it could truly be a matter of the dynamic within your team in terms of headcount.
How bad do you think the summer return offer rates will be? Obviously, it probably won't be as bad it was in 2008/2009, but do you think it will be significantly harder to get the return offer than say 2014, 2015?
Thanks for the insight. Not sure about the rest of my class, a good portion left over the last couple months and haven't heard anything from the ones that are still here.
Start lateral recruiting. You will be entitled to unemployment in the interim (varies by state, about 450/week in NY).
FWIW, my group is bringing in 4-6 less interns relative to last year for a total of 10-12, with the expectation that 8-9 will get return offers.
People are making it seem like we're about to enter another downturn... We're not. The belt is tightening, sure, but the only thing I've noticed is that my group isn't approving analyst travel AS much as they used to. The problems are hitting the equity capital markets and HY markets much more than advisory, though to be sure M&A is slowing down a little.
Also my group has been hiring for the past few months, and I know there are still spots to fill.
Laid-off 3rd year Analysts (Originally Posted: 07/06/2008)
What are all you laid-off 2nd/3rd years analysts doing? I have been looking for a new gig for two months and there just seems to be no opportunities out there? Headhunters seem worthless as well...
Comments are appreciated.
If you saw it coming you would have jumped ship in time and gone into corporate, well that is what I did.
Wow, very helpful tbroker.
Just apply to industry, and then hopefully you can land an MBA gig and then re-apply back into Wall Street.
Most of my friends who have been laid off have had a hard time finding anything as well... some of them already had opportunities lined up, but for those who didn't most seem to be giving up on staying in finance.
If you wait long enough, opportunities will start re-appearing but if you want to start working ASAP industry is probably the best bet right now.
if you go to industry, do you think this would be a blemish on your resume when attempting to get back into banking? i suppose if you got a decent MBA and had at least a year of analyst experience you'd be ok as long as you could explain everything. once this market turns everyone will be looking for analysts/associates.
so you think going to work on an "in-house" M&A team is the right move here? What if you want to get into the buy-side?
If there's only one opportunity, not too hard figuring out what the best one is.
Depends on the alternatives.
its brutal out here. Citi interns have 3 days instead of 5.
job market is terrible right now - anything is better than nothing.
bmwhype So, are you saying that interns at Citi are working three days a week?
dosk, what happens to the laid off 2nd year IB analysts with pe jobs lined up? Do they just sit around for a year and wait to start their new jobs or can they get their pe offers revoked or something for not finishing their stints.
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