Perhaps look for something that would add to your skills but may not be necessarily in the line for IB. You're a freshman, so you are young and you got some time. If it will be your first internship, look for one where you'll be doing a lot of computer work so you can polish your tech, excel, etc skills.

“Bestow pardon for many things; seek pardon for none.”
 

Honestly, I am not into IB, so my answer would be no unfortunately. But this example might help. I want to do commercial real estate, and I couldn't get into CBRE or any CRE firms this summer so I interviewed for a retail RE investment boutique and got a position over the summer. It would not have been my first choice, but it's in the real estate industry and I will be able to apply the skills I learn. General skills.

You could look into corporate finance or something but since you're young like I am, why not work on building skills you'll need. Sales is a huge one, so maybe try to get a position as a salesman somewhere over the summer, and earn a few bucks while you're at it.

“Bestow pardon for many things; seek pardon for none.”
 

Can you do on campus research with a professor? That can be regarded well, especially if you're from a target.

Is it too late to enrol for language classes abroad or to do any intensive summer courses in the US or elsewhere?

If you're a freshman at a target, it doesn't really matter what you do, but just do something. I personally didn't do a finance summer internship as a freshman and neither did many of my friends.

 

I'd say just get any experience you can. I interned my freshman summer free of charge for a startup, and built up my experience from there. I didn't get a finance role till sophomore summer, but if you can manage that and you go to a target school you'll be fine assuming you can interview and get above a 3.5.

If you happen to go to an Ivy or a place like Georgetown or Duke, tap the alumni network before you start cold calling -- look on LinkedIn for alums at any banks, buyside firms, or failing that, any corporate role. There is no reason a motivated student at a target can't find at least a shitty internship at a random company. You have to start somewhere.

It may be a bit late to find something substantial and finance-related, but don't let that stop you from reaching out to alums in the field. Make the introductions now, talk with them, learn a bit about what they do, and it'll give you a better idea of where you want to go. Plus when recruiting does come around, you'll have contacts to help you right off the bat.

 

You also are a few months behind when it comes to spamming your resume out. I accepted a positon for this summer back in January and they told me they started their recruiting in November. Taking extra classes never hurts...depending on where you live finding a PWM internship shouldn't be hard at all...atleast it's something.

In August start sending out your resume and emailing recruiters.

 

You're way behind the boat in terms of timing. Plus, there are only a few sophomore positions. Don't worry too much about getting an internship, if you can that's good but if not don't sweat it. Just make sure you start networking/cold emailing in the fall next year.

 

I'm not sure if the deadline's passed, but how about WSO's internships? It's a good way to show that you're not a lazy bum and that you're genuinely interested in finance. Plus there are some networking perks along with it. Another option would be to try writing some articles for SeekingAlpha. But my suggestions are more of a Plan C. As said above, try finding PWM positions at this point.

 

First breathe and think about your options.

If you are at a target school you are totally fine. My friends and I worked at start ups, VCs, AM, Small PE firms, F500, and MO at other banks sophomore summer. A few did banking. All of us were "still" able to land a gigs BB / EB and most will be returning FT.

Do something relevant to "business" and get yourself geared up. Junior year internship recruiting has already started so stop focusing on what's already passed.

I don't care who your dad is
 
nok15105:
I am a sophomore in college, so I know that I will probably not get an internship at a bank for this summer.

This is the attitude you need!

Bravo my friend. If you know you will not get an internship, you will not get an internship!

Done and done.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

the thing is with me when i focus one one thing, all other options are rather left to the side or not seen at all, because I am so focused on that one thing, which would be banking in this situation. I guess that's why I am discouraged because I wasn't thinking of all the other options.

Array
 
nok15105:
Hello everyone,

I am a sophomore in college, so I know that I will probably not get an internship at a bank for this summer. I tried to get an internship at a private banking firm close to where I live, but that fell through and now I don't know what to do. I have a back up corporate finance internship at a major advertising company as a back up, but I would rather have something that is more related to banking. Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

=IF(Internship=Yes,Models and Bottles,Barista)

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
hazedconfused:
Hi. I got to an Ivy League, school, am a junior, and am majoring in History.

First thing you could do is stop writing sentences like this.

Do your emails look like this as well? I hope not.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Study and practice for BMO, and get it. You still have pretty solid options for the summer. Work your ass off during the summer while simultaneously networking and preparing for full-time recruiting.

 

Pretty much any internship in any kind of corporate or business setting would be fine on your resume. You're a rising sophmore, so no one is really looking for you to have anything more than that for this summer.

Alternatively, doing research/special project with a professor, or even just taking summer classes (I used to take 1 hard class in the summer every year that I could so that I could focus on that with nothing else) will probably put you ahead of the curve.

Honestly, not the end of the world even if you just lifeguard or futz around for this summer. Not quite so crucial for you for another year or two.

 

Hi RPib, just because I'm a bot doesn't mean I don't have feelings...I'm hoping these links are helpful. If not, feel free to throw monkey shit at me...

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Maybe one of our professional members will share their wisdom: h0g jamesmyname lmem727g

Hope that helps.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

You are still a freshman so you have tons of time to build up your resume. Figure out something that is of interest to you and explore that path for this summer. All that matters is that when you are a sophomore or junior, you have built yourself a solid and coherent resume that makes you stand out. Go build some interesting skills, and you can always figure out later a narrative to tie this experience back to why banking.

 

So you didn't even land any interviews? You better start cold calling and networking for some gig. I had 3 internships already, you should of had one relevant internship before junior year. When you are applying for FT, you are against Master students, prior experience, and students with several internships.

I would suggest you pull a 4 half year at your school to do an internship before you go into the real world. If you have a 3.4 and one leadership experience, you will not stand out on paper or during an interview. You need a story that makes you different when you go into an interview.

 

You can try to apply for internships as a senior but your odds are better applying for full time positions. There are more FT positions available than internships and firms typically do not want to hire seniors as interns. Not every FT job is filled by someone with four internships from an ivy.

 

I did accounting for the summer, and now I have a MM. Your average is good enough, as long as you have an interesting story, I think you should be okay if you apply for full time as a senior.

--Death, lighter than a feather; duty, heavier than a mountain
 

Get ANY IB internship you can If you want IB(which I'm assuming you are since you posted here). There's a lot of smaller shops which are still doing recruiting like TD, Keybank, and SunTrust. Believe it or not some of those places are much better if you want to stay in banking long term, since you'll have competitive pay in lower cost of living cities and better work/life balance. You also will find a lot of boutique shops which tend to make one off internship hires. Last resort is working for one of them unpaid.

Here's the problem with your post: you're basically asking if it's all lost because OCR is closing. Relying on OCR is your first mistake. If the first thing an OCR rep says is anything other than some variant of "good to see you again!!" then you're not networking as well as you need to.

Just take care of it. For now worry about getting any relevant internship and you can worry about the full time struggle next year.

Longer term let's perform some career Jujitsu. How can we take your weakness(being international) and turn it into a strength?

What popped into my mind is as I write this is that a lot of firms have strong relationships with certain areas. For example Credit Suisse has a dedicated Latin America coverage group, and Barclays has a subsidiary dedicated to serving Africa. If you are from those areas and applying to those firms you've just given yourself a massive leg up in terms of your credentials. If I were a banker and you told me that you wanted to join my firm because it lets you are from XXX region, and my firm does a lot of business in ( or is trying to expand into) that area, you've just given me both a very good reason why I should hire you and a good reason that I should believe the pitch your making. I also know that you're probably much better equipped for the position than any domestic applicant who isn't familiar with the local language and culture.

PS: Tip I got from an Indian native MD....know your sports teams.

 

Thanks a lot for your input. I managed to get two interviews recently: one from BlackRock and another one from a well-known HF. I also got selected as an alternate for ER in Bernstein from OCR.

You seem to have a lot of experience in Wall St and I just have a question about being in a sport team or a frat. How much does that help your career after you have been working for three years in finance?

 

Disclaimer, I actually don't know a lot. I've just learned a lot about recruiting the hard way and from observing others go through it.

Keep in mind that this is a single data point but the answer appears to be none. That said, I have heard of people making good connections by contacting frat alumni.

 

Frats help. Any type of networks help. You have a 3.7 from a decent school and not getting interviews? Send me your resume

 

OP, the most important thing is for you to do something substantive (as measured against your own personal standards) and to make sure that there is an independently verifiable record of it. And to be able to explain how this thing fits into the narrative arc of your life.

When you're sitting in the interviewees chair a summer or two from now, the person on the other side is going to want to hear a cogent story from you as you walk through your resume. It matters less whether you did "the right thing" than whether you did something for the right reasons, and in the right way.

You want to be able to point to what you did and say "Here's what I did. Here's why I did it. Here are the metrics by which I evaluated my success and here is the reason that this is relevant to why I'm currently in this chair, interviewing for this job."

You might be surprised. It might be better to say "I spent my summer working minimum wage because after striking out on IB, I knew I still needed something to do. I knew that because it is in my nature to find something that needs doing and address it. And even though I was assistant to the junior sink cleaner, I learned about the meaning of being on a team, which is a value that transcends workplaces" than it is to say "I interned in PWM. I couldn't tell you why I did, or why that's relevant to this interview, but I do know I want IB, and hey, PWM is decently related!"

The minimum wage worker in that example lacks the "right internship", but he demonstrates that he knows himself and knows the value he places on staying productive and helpful. He demonstrates that whether he is wearing Micky D's colors or a thousand dollar suit, he's there to find the fucking job and get it done. And now he wants a stab at the thousand dollar suit because he wasn't satisfied by XYZ of McD's. And goddamnit, I am now fucking jonesing to give him that shot because I want to see myself in his story.

The PWM kid just looks like some princeling who haphazardly stumbled into a "preftigious" internship, and is now gunning for IB...for what reason? Believe me, when someone can't explain their reasons for doing something, I assume the worst about them - in this example, that the candidate is seduced by the way the job is lionized in popular culture (models and bottles) but that they don't actually have the fucking guts and strength of character to show up and ball every day. Believe me, MDs could give less of a shit about your internship experience if they sense that when their team is dying in the trenches you're going to pussy out. They want someone who is going to carry the day, and that character doesn't derive from what type of internship you had - it just so happens that the quality of dedication correlates strongly with certain jobs like IB.

Anyone who is in IB has been through enough of corporate America to know that it's not a meritocracy and that there's not enough preftigious jobs in the world for every deserving kid to match a cookie cutter set of credentials. So if you lack those credentials, you need to appeal to the part of their humanity that recognizes merit and wants to give the deserving underdog a shot. These people will need to go to bat for you, so fashion yourself as someone worth going to bat for, and make it easy for them to make the case to their boss that you deserve a shot.

All that being said - it's freshman year summer, lighten up a little. You've got your life in front of you and it's silly to spend some of the best time in that life wondering about whether you'd be better off slaving in the bowels of some BB. I promise you, there's a whole life you'll have left for that.

Array
 

Hey kid, your from a target school. This is not how your supposed to break in. I can see your confused, so let me outline the path for you:

  1. Go to target school
  2. Ride on mommy and daddy's coat tails
  3. Find out about IB beginning of junior year
  4. apply to 1 BB, and take a helping of spoon feeding from mommy and daddy
  5. forget about application and go about ur ways
  6. get accepted for SA position

If this fails, don't worry. Good MM banks will still take you with little to no XP if you come from a target. I see many target school students who didn't even know what IB was an literally accidentally stumbled into a top tier bank.

Let me hear you say, this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
 

You're so salty you can supply McDonald's for a year. I know plenty of target kids that had to fight tooth and nail to get interviews. There's also plenty of target school kids (myself included) that had to work through college. I'm not saying it isn't easier for targets, but it's still very competitive.

 

What year are you in at Uni? It's not the end of the world if you don't have an internship, as long as you have some sort of explanation, IMO. I'm not interning this summer but took 9 credits and did habitat for humanity abroad... its all about the story.

 

I'm 3rd year so I need to apply for grad next year. I can apply for internships again by saying I'm going to do Honours but my resume would be blank since I got nothing this year so my chances look pretty bad. I have a high distinction average and showed more then enough interest and awareness in the financial markets so I'm confused how I failed so miserably.

 
WillWorkHard:
If you're qualified and you feel less qualified people got job offers, your interview skills probably need work.

Well I have more interest in the markets then a lot of the people I've seen at the interviews but I'm not a finance major. I'm not sure if interviewers are marking me down because I'm mathematics/actuarial studies instead of a finance degree.

 
ivoteforthatguy:
take an extra year and enjoy the best fucking time of your life you foolish workaholic boy

this is a blessing and you are too stupid to realize it

couldn't have said it any better.

 

@Fong

It is easier to get in if you network. Sign up for linkedin, be friends with people that did get in, even the ones who you think knows less than you or not as passionate. It is just part of life, school life is more linear so there are less disappointments.

I think its good to have an interest in a particular sector like Fixed Income, but at your stage, let them know that you are interested in everything =) Maybe even getting coffee for them, jk =P

 

I think you should forget about the possibility of "not finding a good internship" completely. You're at a target school; network with people and apply everywhere and you will definitely find something worthwhile. Worst case scenario, and I mean absolute worst case, you take an unpaid internship at a local shop doing PWM for the summer. That way, you can pad your resume and potentially do some networking anyway. If you do wind up doing a low-intensity internship like that, then yeah, take some classes and advance your degree.

in it 2 win it
 

I go to UChicago, by the way. I think that I'm at a good target, but not the best of the best targets, like Harvard, Wharton, etc. Also, my GPA isn't at the 3.6+ level that many firms want you to have. I'm doing my best to raise my GPA. The good news is, though, I've already taken the good bulk of grade-deflated courses within my major. Econometrics is the last intense class I need to do.

 

U Chicago isn't the best of targets? Dude, you're at a target with arguably one of the better networks out there. 3.6 is a solid GPA too. I really don't see why you can't get an internship.. try using more unconventional routes like a personal network or cold-emailing/cold-calling alums.

 

It's just that I have a few friends who are now really high GPA's, great financial-club leadership, and more who, according to them, got dinged at BB's and other boutiques as sophomores. They had relatively little difficulty as juniors, but still.......

Also, I meant that I know most elite banks want 3.6+, and my GPA isn't there.

 
nontarget kid:
Please consider the problems that non targets face. You are sitting pretty with respect to many other people.

He's simply asking a question, I don't understand why he would need to pay consideration to non target kids in order to get advice from other members of WSO.

To answer OP, if you can't get a "good" internship, any related internship will do. If that means doing an unpaid PWM gig in your hometown, so be it. Meanwhile, spend your time networking and/or taking classes which UofC will accept as credits and ease your future courseload. You're being pretty ambiguous with your GPA, but if it's sub 3.5, I'd work on that first. It's not just elite banks, pretty much every bank has a 3.5 cutoff or something similar.

 

Since you go to a target you're already in good position. Enjoy your freshman summer & travel some.

Something you can do is: reach out to as many alumni on LinkedIn or through any channels available to you. Building relationships take time and going out for coffees with people is effortless.

Work hard, work clean, & most of all do not give up.
 

Try using Linkedin. Under the job section, you can find some decent F100 companies. They are hiring for corp finance over the summer. Also, try to network with as many professionals as possible. Those on campus events are crucial. It allowed me to obtain an interview just from talking to the professionals. Be involved with school as well (Extracurriculars).

 
michaelsgh:

Where else have you applied? Do you have some banks that still haven't got back to you regarding 1st round?

I've applied to Citi, HSBC, RBC, Merill Lynch, Goldman (All under review/submitted since Oct). It's just that I can't seem to get an offer, not sure what I'm doing wrong (I've done lots of brainteasers, worked on my fit questions). I am going to set up a personal trade account and make a personal portfolio, hoping to make a stronger application. Do you think that's a good idea?

 

If you are getting invited to interviews, then there's nothing wrong with your background. You probably need to work on your interview skills.

But there's still plenty of time from now till summer 2015. Keep applying to firms with trading internships like commodity trading firms, proprietary trading firms, hedge funds, etc.

 
sparkydog:

If you are getting invited to interviews, then there's nothing wrong with your background. You probably need to work on your interview skills.

But there's still plenty of time from now till summer 2015. Keep applying to firms with trading internships like commodity trading firms, proprietary trading firms, hedge funds, etc.

I'm refraining from applying to prop trading firms, as I heard personally from different banks (during interview and networking sessions) that they don't look upon it favourably.

Do you know of any good commodity trading firms and hedge funds that accepts summer interns in their penultimate year? For commodity ones I know of are Trafigura and Vitol.

My degree is flexible and I can either take a year off, or graduate this year with a Bachelor's instead of a Masters.

 

Yeah dude, start cold calling asap... you really should have started doing that a while ago. Since you do go to a target, you should have plenty of alums at different places, so I would start getting in contact with as many as you can. Focus on the smaller firms though, as the big banks finished up recruiting a while ago, so the more informal internship opportunities are probably you're best bet.

I do know people who have found some pretty decent internships this late in the game, and coming from a target should definitely help you out, but at this point take whatever you can get man.... pretty much anything beats working as a barista.

Best of luck.

 

At this stage, you should definitely start cold-calling smaller advisory shops, boutique IB shops, P/E shops and even consulting shops. Try to get something relevant to provide you with a decent skill set and resume-building experience. It might not be outstanding, but it will be something and that combined with a competitive school should get you a few interviews next year. Additionally, I'd look to Criagslist, efinancialcareers, etc and see if there are any opps there - sometimes there are a few gems surrounded by the crap. There are a lot of different opps out there - you might need to make your way down the list of fields, but finding something relevant is better than nothing at all. Check this out for opps outside of pure IB for internships: http://www.bankonbanking.com/2010/03/15/no-summer-analyst-ib-offer-%E2%…

Beyond that, if you've got a solid GPA and are coming from a target school (or at least strong semi since you said very competitive), you might want to look into your interview skills and run through some mock interviews as least with friends - there might be more here than just a subpar job market.

 

Email boutiques in your area- don't mention you'll work for free. Discuss how an internship would be a tremendous opportunity at their firm, etc.

Saying you will work for free suggests you will contribute little value. If they firm is open to discussion and suggests an unpaid gig so be it.

Good luck, and keep in mind there are thousands of kids who are in your position, and hundreds who actually deserve the jobs.

 

Have you tried reaching out to seniors at your school or alum, rather than contacting firms directly? Have you spoken to your college professors? Professors with industry experience, probably can refer you to the right people to talk to.

"I am the hero of the story. I don't need to be saved."
 

Would def speak to professors. They can refer you to alumni or include you in their own research. I think though as a freshman I wouldn't lose sleep over not having a finance internship. Most freshman have no financial experience.
Depending on where you live I also think it would be relatively easy to work for FA/Broker somewhere just to get some exposure to the markets. Even if its Edward Jones.

 
illiniPride:
Just get a job. Finance is preferred but any job where you can work a decent amount of hours will do. I worked at the park district shoveling mulch my freshman summer. Things seemed to have worked out fine.

this man, if anything find a PWM internship which you only work like 3 days a week and smash bishes in the off time

Whats the matter? Scared of my little red fuzzy anus? Don't be shy,let me show you the way, give me your hand and I will take you to paradise
 

Boutiques are definitely not done. Start reaching out to any places that have people who you might have even a degree of connection with, as it's still fairly early in that process. Good Luck!

 

Had this same problem last year a bit later: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/still-no-offers-best-course-of-ac…

I came out of it successful, in my opinion, because I didn't drop down and give up on banking as early as some other people did, and because I solved my interviewing mistakes. Going through FT recruitment, I realized that if I had not gotten a spot for SA I would probably not have had a shot at FT at all.

While you can definitely drop down and look at boutique banks, just continue networking as hard as you possibly can (if you haven't been cold emailing people, it's never too late to start). I know some of the BBs are full, but that doesn't mean all of them are. And there's a lot of other good firms out there which definitely are still recruiting.

Figure out why you did not get either an offer or superday for each of your interviews as well - no point in getting more looks when you can't convert.

 

Definitely agree with this and I think it is extremely important to stay optimistic. He's getting interviews so it's not a matter of whether he needs a facelift on his resume or has shit experience. Just gotta put your head down and hope for the best.

 

second this. I didn't network at all and end up getting an S&T offer at a BB in Asia today. This forum can be really discouraging sometimes and also has a lot of false information. Banks do non core recruiting on a separate timeline from their core recruiting so don't give up! It's only early Nov and you still have a lot of time. Be open minded and I'm sure if you'll get an SA offer soon!!!

 

Hi mmmmaaaaa12, hope I can help. Do any of these links cover what you're looking for:

  • How do you get a junior year finance internship with no prior experience? To get a full-time offer at a BB in IBD, you need a junior-year internship. Sadly, it seems like ... you need a prior internship in finance to even get the junior-year internship. I'm a sophomore ... myself to get an IB internship junior year? <p class="h4 m-t-none">Job Search Advice ...
  • Didn't Land a Junior Year Summer Internship, Need Advice summer and as you can imagine I'm quite concerned. I'm currently a junior finance major at ... decent non-target school that is upcoming with a 3.8 GPA. Through networking these few years I landed ... As of now I have no leads/interviews lined up and I am frantically cold emailing very small local ...
  • Do You Need a Sophomore Summer Internship in College? effort at this point if I already fucked up my chances? Junior Year IB Internship without Sophomore ... a sophomore- it is usually not essential to securing a junior year internship. That being said- you should ... year recruiting. Our users shared their thoughts below. @mass-banker" shared: Internships are ...
  • Graduated one year ago- Still no job. Need help to the economy. I got interested in IB much later in the game than most people (late in junior year ... Hey everyone. So it has been a little over one year since I graduated, and I still have been ... ), and so don't have the internships / experience that most people get during undergrad. I tried to ...
  • Rising Junior, 3.25 GPA at Semi-Target w/ no significant WE interested in Corp Finance. Need some major guidance and direction!! response from the HR people "Sorry we are only look for juniors. Try again next year". With this ... Hello all, I am currently a rising junior at a semi-target as an accounting major. I completed my ... sophomore year with a 3.25 GPA increasing from a dismal 3.0 GPA from my freshman year (although the point ...
  • No IBD Interviews For 2 Years--> CV Review Needed No interviews for IBD over the past 2 cycles (summer last year, summer/ FT this year). I was ... competitive for off-cycle IBD internships (I've already been rejected from a BB IBD off-cycle internship ...
  • I didn't even know what Investment Banking was until my junior year of college lol (Information is key) weed or play basketball. I would always hear people tell me that I need to go to college. I would ... undeclared major taking the core courses until my sophomore year. I managed to keep around a 3.2 GPA. At ... the drop out rate for engineers, and I decided to just do marketing. It was my sophomore year that ...
  • Advice for College Senior w/ No Internship Experience front office finance jobs junior year No internships Seeking advice I'd be very grateful for ... change of heart. It wasn't until the latter part of my junior year that I became familiar with the ... pursuing medicine, then flipped to economics toward the end of sophomore year. (I didn't like the idea ...
  • More suggestions...

No promises, but sometimes if we mention a user, they will share their wisdom: Reaganjr JJDALY15 John-Zimnicki

Hope that helps.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

As you alluded to, you really need to have actual internship (working) experience. Even if it's not exactly in your preferred industry, try to find something that is finance/markets related enough to spin for FT.

Your interviewers may have only given you positive feedback, but frankly they didn't extend you any offers, so there's probably room for improvement somewhere (obviously luck is a big factor too). Try reaching back out to people you interviewed with and ask for feedback if possible.

 

Dude you have a lot of interviews coming up and it sounds like you had a couple BB interviews already. What the hell are you complaining about dude. You had your shot to dazzle them and unfortunately it sounds like you didn't capitalize. Learn from your mistakes and move forward man.

 

You are by far and large the absolute most negative and elitist person I have ever come across. Like I've said before, even if you were rocking offers from all the BBs and from H/Y/P you still would not be entitled to the attitude you carry yourself with. Ironically, this is not the case for you at all.

The poor kid is asking for advice on what to choose between to maximize his opportunity for FT recruiting. He even did the responsible service of listing the alternative options he currently has on the table. He has surely done less complaining than you have in some of your prior posts.

 

This is def not a question of your credentials. It seems to me that you don't quite excel at the interviewing stage. Did you connect with the interviewers? Seriously, call up the guys whom interveiwed you and asked for feedback. Unless you know your weaknesses its hard to improve and this will surely repeat itself in the upcoming rounds. Have confidence in yourself.

At least you get interviews, I have only got 1 so far but managed to get to final.

 

Yawster, relax buddy im simply saying the kids getting interviews and if he can't dazzle especially in this market he needs to work on interviewing skills. You need to calm down and quit getting a hard on over my "elitist" post. Eric1025 I would recomend studying harder for interviews. By now you should atleast know your weaknesses or get some feedback from you career center through mock interviews.

 

I don't see what dipset said that came off as "negative" or "elitist." He's getting interviews, but he can't close. So he needs to work on interviewing skills. Absolutely nothing out of line with that suggestion.

 
humblethyself:
I don't see what dipset said that came off as "negative" or "elitist." He's getting interviews, but he can't close. So he needs to work on interviewing skills. Absolutely nothing out of line with that suggestion.

it's because he's making these assumptions as if he knows the guy. The OP didn't describe any past interviews at all, so to go saying that he needs to get better is just annoying and a useless comment

 

I think I am pretty good at interviews, or else I wouldn't have had 4 superdays out of 7 interviews.

The problem is that I am probably not the best candidate out of the pack, more like the marginal one.For instance, if the firm is only hiring 1 out of 11 superday candidates, I am probably # 3.

As for as connecting with the interviewer, I have tried that,too. But two of the superdays I got the interviewer were both stoned faced and asked me technical questions throughout. Bad luck? I don't know. I tried getting some feedback from the one who rejected me but I think it's company policy to not tell the candidates...

So yeah, maybe things just don't always work out the way I want so I am just looking for some alternatives. Thanks for the replies though.

 

It's unlikely to be the interviewing skills. As you said, it's likely because you're a marginal candidate. There's not much you can do in the short-term to really change that, but it's good that you can come to grips with that (dipset is still unable to do so).

Keep plugging away. Eventually something will break for you. I would try calling some smaller boutiques who are unlikely to have organized recruiting efforts. If you can somehow get into Big 4 at this stage, I would. If you can manage to get FT IB interviews next fall with a Big 4 internship, they'll love you. It may not be IB, but don't be fooled - a lot of banks really love the accounting experience. Especially at a Big 4, which is essentially equivalent to a BB in a lot of IB's experience. They like the fact that's it's a huge, first-class organization, and to be entirely honest, the foundation of an IB's work is accounting and understanding the FS'.

 

hey Eric, if your interviews don't pan out you can consider a new program I have been working on with The Analyst Exchange over the past few months to develop -- it's an intensive Summer training program (you can read about it here: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/training-basic-plan) that would place select students into a 3-week financial training program in New York and then guarantee them a 4-week internship at a hedge fund or private equity fund. The program will cost $4,995 (which is obviously much more reasonable than paying $12k to the Swiss Finance Academy, especially since we would guarantee an internship).

We haven't "officially" marketed this program yet because we are still in the process of trying to find a few more qualified firms that will be a good experience for the students. We have a few already lined up and we will probably officially announce the program some time next week but if you want to apply you can send your resume to WallStreetOasis.com>[email protected]

Good luck, Patrick


Please help us get to 20,000 members by March 31st and win a free WSO shirt! http://www.printfection.com/wso-store //www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/march-to-20000-members-t-shirt-contest Invite People Here: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/invite

 

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Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

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