Sorry, you weren't good enough

Mod Note (Andy) - as the year comes to an end we're reposting the top discussions from 2015, this one ranks #36 and was originally posted 10/16/2015.

I liked this OCR thread by @Mephistopheles". Unlike the other OCR threads by @KREBSCYCLEOMG" (link to first one, second one) that highlighted the most dysfunctional candidates we all dread, it highlighted the fact that many people are doing many things right. It was encouraging and had a strong message to keep persisting towards your goals, but there was just one problem with it.

It might make you feel all warm and fuzzy to hear you were quite brilliant, that you aced it, you crushed the technicals. It might feel like a warm blanky to hear that you did everything right, but if you didn't get the job, then, obviously the people who beat you out did everything more right!

The fact is that if other people got the job and you didn't then you weren't at the top of the list. You can tell yourself all the reasons that it’s not your fault, or you can focus on getting better than everyone else. Some say, well that’s not reasonable or realistic, and that is why they will keep failing. Look out at the world and you see just how competitive it can be.

A professional athlete must be at or near the top of their town, high school, college, state, investing most of their life in their sport just to get a crack to go pro. An Olympic athlete is the extreme—your entire life training for one spot on top of the podium.

A friend of mine is a concert cellist. If you think it’s hard to land the job on Wall Street, look into his profession. There are few top orchestras in the world. The jobs turn over no sooner than every decade and hundreds of the best candidates in the world vie for one spot.

To get the job you must be better than everyone else. I’m comfortable taking flack from the beta-players on WSO, but if you’re serious about winning and willing to do what it takes, here’s some ideas for you:

1. Keep up your enthusiasm

It's crucial that you get honest with yourself about your level of performance and the true challenge of the goal to land a top job on Wall Street. It's necessary that you evaluate your weaknesses and figure out how you can get better and better, but it is absolutely essential that you stay optimistic and confident.

No-one. Let me repeat that. No-one. Absolutely no-one will bet on you unless you are first betting on yourself. You must do everything you can to get your thinking right and build the bulletproof mindset of a champion.

If you haven't, Read Think and Grow Rich. If you've read it, read it again and again.

2. Give up the BS excuses

If you did your best and you didn't get the job, then your best wasn't good enough. As Napoleon Hill put it, success requires no explanations, failure permits no alibis.

It may be the case that you simply will never get the job or that this is the catalyst you need to challenge yourself to get better and better.

As you read through the comments to that OCR thread you see the excuses stacking up. Nepotism. Blue blood era. It's no longer a meritocracy. So a PSD can't make it. As George Carlin said, It's all bullshit and it's bad for ya!

3. Get better than everyone else

Someone will get the job. will it be you?

That all depends on whether you are better than the other candidates. Do you have better grades? A better school? Stronger resume? Better connections? What do you have that makes you a better candidate than everyone else you are competing against?

4. Better doesn't happen overnight

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell talks about the notion of accumulated advantage. He suggests that talent is over-rated compared to simply 10,000 hours of practice.

The reality for many candidates is that they are starting from behind. If you didn't get the right grades in your SATs and get into a top school then you are behind those who did. Even if you attended a top school, if you had a lousy GPA in your first few semesters you are coming from behind.

If you want to win Gold in the Olympics you have to start training as a kid, and the more time you have to build your track record of success the more likely you are to win.

Even if there is little you can do about this now, ask yourself how can you be taking actions today that are setting you up for the job you want three years from now?

5. Know what makes you exceptional

There’s a lot of excuse-itis on WSO. The cynical types revert to nepotism. Others talk about not being at the right schools or what-not.

The fact that it is rare for a sub 3.0 GPA to make it to Wall Street isn't something to be celebrated, but to be learned from. It says, if you want to win, you must be exceptional. And if that sub 3.0 made it happen, they clearly did something in the interviews that made them come across as exceptional.

You can be exceptional in many ways and your job is to figure out how you will be an exceptional candidate they want to hire.

6. How do you stand out?

Let's be honest there is a lot of luck to this. Behavioral psychology tells us that you are more likely to be successful if you are interviewed in the morning when the interviewer is fresh than in the afternoon. There's a lot you can't control.

But even if you said this is 50/50 skill/luck that's still a lot you can influence. If they have 20 perfect resumes and they choose one, then there is something about that person that leaps off the page.

As one of the commenters to the OCR thread discussed—If you are one of fifteen David’s with a math degree who the interviewer can’t even remember, then that is your fault for being as un-memorable as the other Davids.

So, how are you going to stand out? What makes you memorable? If they meet fifteen clones, what do you do to have them remember you?

7. Preparation, Preparation, Preparation

Vince Lombardi was known for The Power Sweep. As he talked about, there was nothing special about the move. What was special was that he made his players rehearse the move over and over and over again until they could do it in their sleep.

You can read the interview packs, do some mock interviews, and be pretty prepared. Or you can spend months (if you not years) of your life dedicated to how you are going to walk into those interviews and leave an impression they will never forget.

Again, this is hard, few people are willing to go far beyond what is reasonable in preparing, which is why few people will ever win.

If you're serious check out my other thread on crushing your interviews

8. Get exceptional at influence

I heard a story that Warren Buffett has one certificate in his office. It's not his degree from the University of Nebraska. It's not even his Business School certificate from Columbia. It is a certificate for a six-week Dale Carnegie course he took on communications.

Getting the job is about influence. Get exceptional at influencing other people and selling yourself. Learn how to carry yourself. To shake hands. To have a strong conversation. To build rapport. To get people to like you. Learn to speak better. Train your voice, your style. Learn to be exceptional at influencing other people.

And craft your story like a movie director. Your resume is the movie trailer. It must hook them. But everything you do in the interview must get them to say WOW!

About Geoff: A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and investor at the Carlyle Group, Geoff Blades is an advisor to senior Wall Street executives, CEOs, and CFOs, on corporate and strategic matters as well as topics of personal and professional development.

 
Esuric:

"Get better than everyone else"

Excellent advice bro! Very informative and helpful.

I'm not sure why you insist on parading your degeneracy on every thread in this forum. Do the internet a favour and keep it to yourself.

 

His mode of address is a bit on the casual side, but you must have led a rather sheltered life if you genuinely believe that it reflects degeneracy. However, I don't believe for a second that you actually do think that; rather, I think that you're merely behaving a bit like the insecure school-boy trying to make his peers look silly in front of teacher.

 

While perhaps a bit warm and fuzzy, it was more directed to the opposite end of the spectrum from KREBSCYCLEOMG The rare exception to all the rules that simply lost the coin toss. Sort of a morale booster to help that kid keep #1 and #4 in mind. Most candidates probably are not deserving as there are very few kids who are the exception, but at the time I felt there needed to be a counterpoint.

However, after going through 200+ OCR resumes for SA's last night my attitude is completely opposite today. Who the hell told these kids to write a wall of text as a cover letter? These bulleted paragraphs about why you're awesome at excel (not hyperbole by the way)? Telling me the type of candidate I need to hire at my firm? No, just no. Burn it, read geoffblades post, then try again.

I think if someone has to latch on to one point from this post it is #4. With that you can continue building on all the others. I think I identify with it the most.

  • multiple SB's if I could.
 

2 is my favorite but also liked 4-8 too. I think it's easy for people to rationalize when they fall short. Not saying you have to beat yourself up after it but just reflect, look yourself in the mirror, and ask what you should do better next.

 

Thank you friend - a lot to life is luck, and sometimes even with all those factors you mentioned, luck isn't on your side and things happen against you - and perhaps the one thing that you forgot to mention is that being unlucky and being not good enough is okay - For now, and that once you can rise up the challenge, know you are lacking in some aspect, and hone it for what else you've got, that is what makes a star.

 

Nice post.

Many young people/applicants seem to forget is personality/cultural fit. It's one of those things that can be hard to define in explicit terms, especially compared to the hard data metrics (GPA, Internships, EC's, etc.). It's also one of those complex things that can/will make or break you, no mater how much better you are than others on the paper.

So, it's not always that you weren't "good" enough, but rather that the other guy/gal was a better fit for that exact spot. But that's life, you can't win 'em all.

 

I agree completely. sometimes someone else will be a better fit (for whatever reason) than you.

yet, i would suggest this is part of being an exceptional candidate.

your job is to walk in the room as the person who is their cultural fit. learn the lingo of the organization, say the things they say. in influence, you might call this rapport. it is that quality that gets people thinking, this person is like me. this person is my type of person.

again, like most things in life, people say you either have it or you dont. im in the business of building it. and you can build yourself into whoever you need to be to get the job. like brad pitt can play different roles, your job is to walk in the room and play the role that gets you the job.

beyond that, cultural fit can be programmed / directly stated. you can simply say, i've been to all of the presentations and I feel this natural fit with [your company]. then trott out some idea that you heard or read that you know is how the organization defines itself and connect how that fits to you.

i can't say it enough. getting the job is all influence. it is knowing what it takes to be an exceptional candidate and in the room convincing them that you are. the more prepared and the better skilled you are at selling yourself, the more likely you will get the job.

this doesn't take a lot of work. it takes an exceptional approach. you only have a short amount of time with each person and you want to ensure that you are so tight on script that you give them what they need to hire you.

Former banker and investor, advisor to senior Wall Street pros. Learn more at geoffblades.com
 

I think your posts have been great since you've joined, including this one. I'm still going to take issue with a part of it, though.

I agree that, to a point, you want to say what the interviewer wants to hear and be who the interviewer/group/firm wants you to be but if the personality that you have to project is different enough from your true personality then you will hate where you wind up. I work in consulting which is a very different beast than IB/PE or any other pure finance role but when I hire, I need to know that the person sitting across from me is genuine. Sure, you can "learn" personalities just like you can learn technical qs but nobody wants to end up in a group/firm that they truly don't mesh with.

Everything else (prep, showing interest, being memorable, etc). I couldn't agree with more

 

For 75% of the candidates, failure is about their preparation and skill. For 20% of the candidates, failure is about how they were doing that day and what the interviewer was looking for. For 5% of the candidates, success requires no explanation.

If you interview at the Chicago prop shops, you'll sometimes get a phone call with more than just a thumbs up or down; sometimes they'll let you know if you were in the 20%.

 

I think the what most new interviewers don't understand is how tough the competition really is. It used to happen to me all the time - I prep for the interview, walk in there, everything goes more or less as planned, leave with a generally good impression and wait next to my phone until I got the rejection email.

With so many qualified candidates, being "good" isn't good enough. You have to crush the interview, you have to be the exact type of person with the right resume that they are looking for, and you have to walk out knowing that you are the man for the job. Being generally qualified and generally well-liked may get you 2nd or 3rd but only 1 person gets the offer.

 
Best Response

I'd argue that it's a lot easier to be the best niche candidate than to be the best overall candidate.

You have to take some risks in a solid interview. Sketch out the kind of job you'd be perfect for, knowing there's probably a 60-70% chance you're sketching the wrong job for what they're trying to fill. Interviewers appreciate honesty and risk-taking. But then you also need to nail your technicals.

The guy who gets the job isn't the best candidate. It's the person who best meets the team's needs. Taking risks, being honest, and getting a little bit lucky is how you move from the 20% of final round interviews who are awesome candidates but don't get the offer to the 5% who do.

Relax. Be yourself. (But relaxing and being yourself while someone carefully evaluates you can take a little practice) Don't obsess too much, and take a few risks that help you find a job that's a better fit for you.

 

Geoff, terrific post. I rarely sign in here, let alone comment but I felt to compelled to respond to your write-up. Currently analyst at a European boutique, and got dinged for 5 different laterals this summer (mid market and tier 2 BBs) - the fifth one really hit hard.

Did fine in technicals and fine with 'fit' but it's the almost intangible "knowing what it takes to be an exceptional candidate" that I need to work on. I know at times I also convey a lot of nervousness which I need to get down too.

 

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