The decline of MBA OCR
I wrote on this topic briefly earlier but curious to hear other 2nd year MBA students' thoughts on this. So this past week I met up with my career counselor, and she said "OCR is increasingly becoming a less important aspect of full-time job placement, not just here, but at other top b-schools as well." Although consulting OCR remains robust, almost everything else (especially finance) has been in decline, with terms to the # of firms coming to campus and # of offers being handed out. This is surprising given that the economy is relatively recovering, and this is at a MBA business schools">M7 school. Not quite sure what to make of this trend.
What do you mean? Do you mean 2nd year full-time interviews? If so, then yes -- OCR is largely dead because most firms fill from their summer classes or hire on an as needed basis and thus won't want to talk until close to graduation.
But if this is for SA OCR, then no -- getting the SA for a lot of places comes via OCR.
I'm seeing the same. I see good presence of consulting firms (MBB and others) for FT OCR, but very little finance firms.
If you don't mind me asking, what tier b-school are you at?
@"CountryUnderdog" makes a good point. Didn't you also take an isolating "niche" internship?
brady this is what happens when you take a fof internship bro
So if there is a decline in MBA OCR's, where does the next majority of recruiting come from? Clubs? Networking?
Yup. Clubs circulate job postings, networking, applying for stuff on your own, plus the non-ocr school jobs board.
This isn't rocket science gents... sell side finance as a whole is contracting whether it's SnT or IB and most importantly, with BBs recruiting strats, the focus is at analyst level (internal promotes etc). As somebody had said buy side recruiting is scarce BC hiring SA and the nature is more lean and mean.
On an industry wide basis, IB is most definitely NOT net +. Get serious...
More and more people are being entrepreneurial or looking for the true ideal role for them vs being sucked into fomo of IBD or consulting recruiting as well
Less competition gives me a better shot I hope.
This is certainly true. A lot of my classmates are gunning for tech and startups.
I talked to one of my finance professors this past week, and he told me that him and his fellow finance faculty are dismayed by the admissions committee. In the midst of the PC diversity craze and the startup mania, he said that the recent students lack analytical skills and are a disappointment. He even talked to a MD at Goldman who was complaining about how they are having a hard time finding great candidates at our school even though we have always been a huge target school for them.
If it's the same situation I heard about, that MD was just being an asshole. From the stories I heard about those interviews the candidates weren't given a shot.
Wow. Does this represent a significant decrease in the viability of a top MBA for career changers moving into IB?
No, a top MBA will definitely get you into IB if you have a brain. Everybody I know that wanted banking got it. The numbers are down because less people want the job but everybody who does want it has a very good shot at getting it.
I think this is probably what the Goldman MD was probably seeing more of - fewer top candidates wanting to do IB, so the applicant pool they have to choose from is not nearly as rich. I don't think the overall quality of students has changed at top bschools. At my M7 very few wanted to do IB, those that did got summer offers, and about 25-50% had such a miserable summer they don't want to go back. One person actually quit before their summer was even over.
IB is no longer the path to riches it once was. One of my bosses told me that when he was a 3rd year associate people were regularly clearing $600-700k in good groups, now I'd expect its about half that with similar hours. There was also a stat on Bloomberg today that in '08 about 16% of analysts could hope to make MD, that's now down to 12%.
I had the Kellogg presentation today from the career services. I can give the exact figures for kellogg class of 2014:
for internships: 51% on campus interviews 15% off-campus 9% off campus, career services facilitated (E.g. McKinsey who does their interview in a hotel instead of on campus) 18% Job board (usually smaller firms, VC, PE, smaller tech, just-in-time hiring) 1% previous employer 6%
So roughly 78% of internships are found through the school in one way or another (and everyone ends up getting an internship...if you still don't have an internship by april, there are like 10 job postings for everyone 1 student without an internship).
for full time: 47% returned to intern company 5% off campus, career services facilitated 18% on campus 8% off campus 6% job board 8% return to previous employer (e.g. sponsored students) 8% other
So, on campus is only around 1/3 as big for full-time as it is for internships...but you also have less competition. Career services also highlighted there been a decrease in on-campus and increase in job board over the last few years, due to the increase student interest in start-ups, VC/PE, tech, etc. For both full time and internship there are plenty of on-campus opportunities if you want it though - many interview spots go unfilled.
Which school do you attend?
I should add, I've spoken to a lot of 2Y, and I've yet to hear one negative thing about OCR or the job opportunities (They've been very honest about the good and bad at Kellogg, so I don't think they're sugar coating anything though).
That said, finance is very unpopular at Kellogg (I think only ~8% go into it), so if there is a trend against MBA's in finance, we wouldn't notice as much (The one's who do go into it have an easy time, since they have very little competition, and the firms want a diverse MBA class). This might not apply to the top PE/HF's though...but they never use OCR anyways, even for internships.
also:
" he said that the recent students lack analytical skills and are a disappointment. He even talked to a MD at Goldman who was complaining about how they are having a hard time finding great candidates at our school even though we have always been a huge target school for them."
I don't really understand how this is possible, since both the average GMAT and average GPA has been increasing by a lot the last few years. I guess hypothetically, it's possible they are taking a few super high GMAT white and indian males, and using that as a GMAT buffer in order to let in less intelligent non-traditionals, but I really see no evidence of this. Everyone I meet has extremely strong analytic and social skills.
Less people are interested in finance because there are more attractive options out there (which banking is trying to rectify with the recent 25% base salary boosts)... They are seeing less quality applicants because the top applicants are applying elsewhere - not because business schools are graduating worse students.
OpsDude, thanks so much for this helpful breakdown. It was very interesting. To answer your question I attend one of Wharton/Columbia/Booth/Sloan. I don't want to get more specific because of creepy WSO stalkers.
I went through internship OCR this year, but the offers I got were not the ones I wanted. I have a very niche interest within finance (well niche compared to my classmates), so I did not go for banking, PE, or long-short hedge funds. I ended up getting 2 internship offers in Spring: one was with a macro hedge fund run by a former protege of Julian Robertson at Tiger and the other was with a FoF run by former megafund PE partners. It was a tough choice; I only had a few days to decide and ended up going with the latter. I will not be returning there full-time so will have to go through full-time OCR this fall. Company presentations are beginning next week.
That's just my prof's opinion. He has been teaching at the school for a while, so I guess he has a pretty good historical perspective on this. Higher gmat score IMHO doesn't mean THAT much since if you are reasonably smart and study hard, you can do well. The prof obviously has a higher standard of analytical ability than most people do.
I will see how many OCR interviews I get. Everyone is saying that competition for non-PE/HF finance jobs is much less keen than it used to be.
Brady - when you graduate, how do you plan to continue to entertain us? It's almost kind of sad that you're B school journey is going to be ending in 8-9 months.
Can definitely agree that this is the feeling at my school, where OCR takes a back seat to networking-driven job searches (comparing to @"OpsDude"'s numbers, we're significantly less OCR-focused than Kellogg). As pointed out, this is a function of the types of jobs that students want (more start-ups, more small ventures, less banking, less general corporate).
It comes with other interesting implications as well. For example, as more students move from OCR to a network-driven job search, then the date by which students get jobs creeps further and further back. The "high season" for recruiting action is increasingly the spring rather than the fall.
Ya it's interesting, the offers at kellogg actually made a nice "boob shape" for the internships (although a bit lopsided). A lot of internships in february, a big decline, then a lot of offers in april/may - less than in February though.
Booth guy here. What's a boob shape? Bimodal distribution?
Kidding aside, same thing here. Banking and consulting in early Feb., corporate (fin/mktg/strat/biz dev) in Feb.-Mar., startups throughout but more later, and PE/VC in Apr.-Jun.
Hi, I have a question following on from the discussion you guys were having. It's been mentioned here that those people who wanted to go into Investment Banking after their MBAs generally got in. Would these be people who were in Investment Banking before their MBA? Or would these be people who were doing something different (maybe still in Finance) but wanted to break into IBD after? Would these people generally also have modelling skills?
I know it might be difficult to answer, but I guess the main thing I'm trying to get at is if it is possible to go from having no modelling skills to obtaining an MBA, and breaking into IBD. Thanks guys.
Definitely have a good shot if you didn't do banking before. Almost no one I know who was in banking before is going back. You just have to prep for technical questions.
Nearly everyone who does banking post-mba did NOT do it prior to MBA. The previous bankers almost all go into HF/PE/VC/MC/start-ups. Occassionally you'll have someone who did a regional boutique IB and wants to do GS TMT after his MBA, but that's rare.
They hire teach for america teachers and you learn modeling in b school and at work so yes that's completely possible to do as long as you are at a b school which recruits for IBD
I am going to disagree with the consensus and say it's not easy to get an investment banking job, even from a top business school. The IB recruitment process is very time-consuming and networking intensive. Although you don't do cases like consultants, be prepared to reach out to 20+ people at every bank and set up informational after informational. These involve frequent trips to NYC (on your own of course). And countless thank you emails.
I think the process is akin to pledging a frat. You basically have to kneel down and kiss the ring of the investment banker. Even a direct promote who is 5 years younger than you.
Bankers ascribe approximately zero value to the work experience you did before. However, CPAs/Big 4 accountants have an edge sometimes in talking up their financial modeling chops. If you're an Indian, Chinese or Jewish guy, the competition is stiff. If you are a decently attractive woman, the banking world is your oyster. Very few women are interested in IB post-MBA in my experience.
I'm not bitter because banking didn't work out for me (I decided to drop out of the process in mid October of my first year).
You'd probably have a better chance of not sounding bitter if you'd excluded that last sentence.
I think you completely misunderstand what people mean by easy recruiting. It sounds to me like you went to b-school thinking that since you had an MBA doors would just open for you to walk through and are bitter that didn't happen. The reality is any good job paying six-figures will take a lot of work to get. Compared to PE, HF or VC getting an IB job is easy.
Nobody is saying you don't have to put in effort. Obviously you have to network, have coffee chats, be prepared for the interview, etc. The fact that you classify these activities as "hard" I think says a lot. Talking to people without coming off like a douchebag is not difficult, just time consuming.
The fact that they ascribe virtually no value to your pre-MBA work is what makes getting into IB from an MBA so easy. You could have done almost anything before school and as long as you put in the effort you will get a banking offer. This is not true of many career paths. Try recruiting for a top PE gig with a background in Teach for America.
Easy doesn't mean handed to you on a silver platter, easy just means that with a little effort it is a goal anybody can attain.
Ok, just to set the record straight here as I am sure some of the responders above do not work in BB IBD and are not active in recruiting both for their particular groups as well as for their particular schools.
IB is expanding off its "bottom-out" following the crisis; However, this expansion is heavily weighted towards industry groups that cover industries that are healthy and expanding. What does that mean? Consumer Retail, Industrials and maybe a few others are not building up their particular teams, unless that particular bank has MDs with very strong client relationships in that particular sector. Tech is still healthy, and Natural Resources groups are expanding aggressively all across Wall Street. In fact, many banks like RBC who are not traditional IBD powers are really doing well in the Natural Resources space because of all the deal flow. LevFin also is pretty stong in terms of expanding. Also to note, most Top MBA programs (other than Stanford, of course) recruit for NYC IBD. As I probably do not need to mention, Tech and Natural Resources have the majority of their footprint elsewhere.
The recruiting landscape for MBA students has been turned on its head over the last 3-5 years. Top MBA programs have massively expanded their outreach to folks who previously would not have gone down the MBA route. This is due to several factors. Diversity / Female outreach is one of them. Another is that all the top schools are looking to develop strong development programs for folks who want to found start-ups. Every school is competing to see who can graduate the founder of the next Uber (or something like that) and less on being a pipeline for IBD and Consulting. The reason for that is that someone who gets stinking rich overnight when their start up goes public is likely to be more of a big donor to the school than an alumni who is making a $3-5 million a year as an MD at a BB bank. Also, the fact that the Law School bubble has totally popped is causing a lot of people who would have been interested in that route to go to B-School instead. Many of these folks are probably not the banking type (but some are). People are coming into business school after doing things like Teach for America, the Peace Corps, Congressional Staffers, Federal Govm't employees, healthcare professionals, etc. If you go back 10 years, you would not find huge concentrations of these folks at top MBA programs. Not so, now. Once again, probably not your typical IBD-type folks
Pay has not come back to pre-crises levels yet. Although improving, 2nd and 3rd year associates are still making 30-40% less than they did ten years ago. Back then, working 80-100 hour weeks for $450K all-in was acceptable, especially considering they were only a few years away from 60 hours and REALLY BIG MONEY. Doing that now for $300-325 is less attractive, especially when you can go directly to F500 Corp Dev / Internal M&A / Corp Finance and make $200K after two years and be out the door every day at 5 PM. People used to work twice as much because they were making MORE than twice as much. This looks to be coming back, but it's not there yet.
The average age of your Top Tier MBA student has increased dramatically. Not sure what the driver of this is (I do have some ideas), but there are MANY MORE folks on Top MBA campuses in their early 30s than there was 5 years ago. I don't have any data to support this, but anytime I go to different campuses to recruit it always strikes me how many older people are getting MBAs. Older people are more likely to be married with kids and are therefore significantly less likely to want to go to NYC or the Bay Area where the cost of living is god-awful. Making that $200K in Corp Dev in Dallas, Atlanta or Cincinatti gives you about the same standard of living as making $500K in NYC or California, maybe better. Add the hours demands of banking to that, and there you go...
BB Banks are expanding Analyst to Associate promotes, and Analysts are taking them. If you have done 1 year as an analyst in BB IBD, you are not going to learn anything you do not know about finance by getting an MBA. Especially when it comes to applicability to IBD or PE. In fact, after your first year as an analyst, you could TEACH the core finance and accounting courses at a Top Tier MBA. This is not an exageration. To many analysts who want to stay in IBD and not move to the buy side, they see two years out of the game and $100K in tuition as just not worth it.
Foreign MBA students. This is big. Someone can look up the stats if they want, but I would bet you would be shocked at the % of folks on student visas. Top Schools want to recruit folks from foreign countries who will go back to thier home countries and increase that school's network and power base there. Someone from Brazil, China or Russia with family connections there is going to be highly sought after if the school sees that person as likely to return there (even if not immediately after graduation) and thus give the school a presense there. Also, many foreign students would not be a fit for IBD in the U.S. just because their communication skills are not what banks look for in associates. Remember, unlike analyst recruiting prospective associates are heavily evaluated on their client-facing skills. Being an MD is about being a dealmaker, not a number cruncher. Many a foreign MBA student has been nixed for an IBD job for this reason. This is a FACT! Also, many of these foreign MBA students could also potentially have Visa issues as well if they do not already have a green card.
At the 3-4 top schools that I recruit at (including my own) the number of students who are interested in IBD has more-or-less halved over the last few years. If you want to get into IBD, no matter what you background prior to attending a top MBA program, it's pretty easy as long as you are not a total douche and you are well prepared for interviews.
Awesome post. Very well written and articulated. I would say banking tends to discriminate against people over 30. Also, my sense is that there are older students who delayed going to business school from 2008-2011 just because the job market was so terrible. Maybe people took any job they could find and are now getting bored/dissatisfied.
I think HBS and Stanford skew very young these days- bucking the trend you've observed at other schools. It is very difficult to get into HBS over the age of 27 unless one has a PhD or is Mormon with high stats or is military with notable experience in Iraq or Afghanistan. Sandy Kriesberg at Poets and Quants has a lot on this.
FormerHornetDrive nailed it. The only issue I disagree with is #4 since the median age of the top b-schools has gone down in the past 5 years. Perhaps the applicants he's interviewing are tilting older.
It really is amazing how much the student body has changed since the financial crisis. My school, which is traditionally known as a finance powerhouse, has become really diverse in terms of student background. Understandably, this also means that there are fewer finance people than before. For instance, I'm one of the few traders in my class. The prof I talked about in this thread mentioned how a course on advanced derivatives would routinely get 30-40 students. Last year only 10 took it, so the prof stopped offering it since he felt that it was a waste of his time.
hey brady, hope all is well, try not to make it so obvious that it's you posting on the site again
I just graduated. From personal experience and from talking to my OCR when there is a decline in OCR placements its typically from good economic conditions where students self select and become more picky in their job hunts. I do not think this is an indictment on OCR or companies choosing to not recruit MBAs - in fact quite the contrary.
Another point it you need to look at rising % of internationals over time. Often many of them are not able to secure OCR placements due to Visa issues (depending on industry).
As far as finance is concerned - IB recruiting is heating up (looks at this weeks WSJ article where Patrick is quoted and BB say hiring is up 10-40%). PE/HF probably never really did OCR anyway.
Getting ibanking associate from top 10 is "easy" in that most people who recruit for it, get it. There's a lot you have to do to get it, but those who go through the hazing rituals have a very high conversation rate.
This.
Ouch. Brady finally went to MBA and it wasn't what he expected? Cruel world
I have a feeling that nothing Brady has ever done or experienced has lived up to his expectations he formed in his mind or given him what he thought he deserved.
Let's do this as an exercise... From a firm's POV, one of the first questions to ask is: to OCR or to not OCR? Then it's: summer internship or Full-Time Recruiting? It's at this point that you see whether a firm prefers to pay an option premium or just take a bet. The internship salary is the option premium for really evaluating a candidate. Taking a bet is just doing a few hours of interviews in the fall and hiring the candidate based on that plus the resume. Of course, just like with taking investment positions, there are 'constraints' that appear from time to time. One of these constraints is that it may be difficult to replicate the real job in an internship environment - this is particularly true of rotational program positions, for example. As a result, they might only do OCR. However, for many other jobs, especially at the MBA-level, it is indeed possible to recreate the environment, and so the summer internship position is a rational one. So most typical MBA jobs (ie. in which the summer internship is a reasonable proxy for the real life) will likely have already filled up over the summer. This is especially true of IB. This leaves rotational program positions, specialized positions and often Management consulting jobs for FT OCR. Why is Management Consulting in the mix, given that they can indeed also do a lot of summer recruiting? Well, the summer internship is indeed a valuable proxy for the real job, but the Case Interview is nearly just as good a proxy, and comes at a much cheaper premium (options!). So MC firms are happy enough doing both internship and full-time recruiting.
How is FT recruiting going for everyone? Still interviewing here, no offers yet.
Just did some banking interviews. Don't want banking, but I wanted the practice, and they recruit aggressively on campus so I figured I'd show up. A lot of the non-banking finance guys are still recruiting, mostly off-campus though; the good buyside jobs will get posted later in the school year.
You guys applying for off-campus roles that are for immediate fill or is that a waste of time at the moment?
Is there any list of MBA schools that have on-campus recruiting? (Originally Posted: 03/01/2013)
Half the time I'm spending looking at business schools is just trying to figure out if banks do recruiting there? Is there any main list?
BONUS: I'm correct that all of the following do have that, correct? - Notre Dame (Mendoza) - Wisconsin-Madison - UT Austin (McCombs) - Indiana University (Kelley) - Ohio State University (Fisher)
Don't know if I've ever seen an OSU MBA. I'd replace that with Michigan (Ross).
One thing to note, some schools differ between undergrad and MBA as to IB recruiting. Georgia Tech has Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey on campus for undergrad but not for their MBA program.
Another thing to note: Most of this stuff you could find via googling for their employement statistics/full time employment reports. Then poke around till you get the actual report stating how many of their students went to which company etc. It gives a good idea of who is going where.
If you can manage try and go for Ross, Ross > all the school on your list. As newB mentioned, some of the school yous listed have great UG programs, and banks recruit there, but I'm not as positive about the MBA program. Furthermore, since most of you schools are Midwest, your main target are going to be Chicago banks, but you'll be going against Kellogg, Booth and Ross
Also as to Notre Dame: Had a buddy who graduated from there in '10 and worked for a BB in NYC but this BB did NOT recruit on campus.
finding out if "banks do recruiting there" is not a very meaningful exercise. this binary tells you nothing. which banks and how many hires are what matter. also employment reports can be misleading when they tell you how many people a bank hired but don't tell you the nature of the role - the lower the school, the more likely it is that the roles were middle office/corporate banking/etc.
from your list, i think UT-Austin is the only place where your odds of getting an IB job are not terrible. not good but not terrible.
Full-time finance OCR at b-school (Originally Posted: 08/17/2014)
My school just released the on-campus recruiting schedule for full-time roles: company presentations and job postings. Looking through, I was disappointed with the finance postings. Some banking but virtually no Asset Management or trading. The big mutual funds however are doing OCR (capital group, fidelity, wellington, franklin templeton). The vast majority of the jobs are consulting, general management, corporate finance rotational programs, marketing. I looked at previous years in the database, and it looks like that finance ocr was much more robust in the past, so this seems to be part of a trend whereby a lot of firms have stopped OCR. Although there are some good jobs that I will apply to come fall, it looks like I may have to do a lot of off-campus networking and searches. Of course, OCR is just one piece of the job search, and I certainly knew this coming in, but I've been dismayed at how much financial firms have cut down on OCR.
Interested to hear from MBA students at other top schools about this.
Any chance the schedule just isn't finalized yet? It's not uncommon for companies to be tardy picking their dates.
I already asked career services about this, and they said the list is pretty much finalized. Applications for first round interviews are due in September, so companies need to post by the end of August.
Are those 4 the only large mutual funds doing OCR at Wharton? All for equity research positions I assume?
Those were the only 4 I saw. Did not see dodge&cox, wellington, putnam, state street, mfs, etc. Oh there's also PIMCO, but on the job posting it said "TBD." So unsure which roles PIMCO will recruit for. Last fall PIMCO cancelled full-time recruiting at all schools. As for the mutual funds I mentioned, they are recruiting for both equity and credit research.
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