Recruitment has wrapped up for most BBs, boutiques, and MM firms out there. No fear, of course, there are plenty of boutiques that will be hiring into the Spring, so if you didn't get the offer you wanted, there's still time to get something sweet.
Recruitment is obviously a stressful time for a lot of people, and I know I'm personally very glad to have it behind me, even though it was a great learning experience in a lot of ways.
Here's a short list of things I learned through recruitment, and ultimately things that were instrumental to receiving the exact offer I wanted. I'm interested in hearing how recruitment went for all of you out there, and any insights you can share on things you learned, could have done differently, or feel you excelled on.
1. Don't overestimate the competition
This has been said time and time again on this website, but I think it's particularly important because people who both read this site AND are interested in investment banking tend to be extremely neurotic. This leads to obsessing over every possible piece of recruitment and preparation: did I edit that e-mail correctly? Did I say the right things? Did I shine my shoes?
Most of these things don't actually matter, because the kids you're up against probably aren't paying attention to them. Throughout my superdays, I ran into kids wearing "gaudy" pinstriped suits, large-faced watches, and square-toed shoes. Did all of these things matter? Unlikely, but be assured, most people out there aren't starting threads on WSO titled "Hermes vs Burberry tie 4 superday - discuss". Who actually gives a shit?
Oh right, the things that actually matter are the interviews themselves. I probably spent ~300 hours preparing for interviews and making sure that I knew what I was talking about since I was coming from a liberal arts background. This was overkill and borderline insane/obsessive, but it worked, and I felt very prepared during my superdays. Other folks out there are probably not quite that dedicated.
2. Networking is really the most important thing
I wasn't on campus. I wouldn't have gotten any interviews without networking and diligently following up with people. No ifs ands or buts about it. If I were on-campus at a target school, I would have done resume drops like everyone else, but I imagine that resume drops + networking is the best combination you can be working with.
3. Have fun with it
The interview isn't gonna go as you planned. It won't even be close. That doesn't imply that it will go badly, it just means that everything you've created in your head that makes you believe that an interview will follow a particular course is probably false.
Obviously you can prepare yourself for certain questions, but at the end of the day, you'll be improvising and thinking on your feet a lot, and you have to remember to have fun with it so you both don't come off as too rigid/automated and because having fun will make you feel better about the interview, you'll feel more relaxed, etc.
And at the end of the day, interviews can actually be pretty fun. You get to meet some cool people, you get to talk about yourself (who doesn't love this?), and you have the opportunity to accomplish something really great...hopefully you DO think it's great, else why bother?
These are some observations from my own recruitment weeks and months. How did it end up for you guys? Did you get the offer you wanted? If you didn't, do you plan on doing F500 or something else entirely? Still targeting IB or consulting? What'd you learn, what would you do differently?
Looking forward to reading what you guys have to say. Thanks.
No matter how good recruiting is at your school, how strong your resume is, the odds are stacked against you. I know a bunch of students who had killer resumes and ended up with no offers (at a target school). Some students were dinged by lots of "lower tier" places and then scored an offer at a top BB, or conversely, had interviews for all the BBs/MMs/boutiques and ended up with just one MM offer. So much luck involved, so dependent on your networking and more importantly how you connect with your interviewer.
I had a first round for a multinational corp last Friday for their FLDP program, still waiting to hear back if I got invited to next round. OCR at my school is pretty pathetic as well, consisting of admin jobs and "financial adviser" (cold-calling/sales) positions. Didn't do any networking during the summer because I was pretty sure I'd get a return offer from the place I interned at, but that didn't happen.
Not to burst the bubble but if you interviewed a week ago and haven't gotten a callback the odds are slim. Usually you hear within a couple days.
DonVon: congrats on the offer. Sounds like you hustled hard and deserve it. Now just try to enjoy the time you have before you start!
Things were looking pretty bleak for me, but started to pick up. Waiting on some final round decisions now. What would I do differently? Well, I'd start by going to a different university and actually trying to get good grades! Will second the "stressful time" bit as well.
This pertains to #1: http://dealbreaker.com/2012/10/why-i-left-goldman-sachs-chapter-three-m…
I think DonVon is dead-on with the keys to recruiting. Networking was definitely the most important thing at least for me. When I decided that I wanted to switch from audit to i-banking, I spoke to my brother's friends and I was focused on my gpa and work experience. But all my brother's friends told me that doesn't really matter as long as you network well. At the time i hadn't really bought into that idea, but definitely found it to be true. I started reaching out to as many alumni as possible during this summer. There is no way I would have received an interview if I didn't network. I actually found out about my Superday interview 10 days before and I hadn't studied much for the actual interviews. So once I received the superday, I read Practioners Guide to M&A and I-banking and went through the M&I guide. When I finally got to the interview, I decided to just have fun with it and not worry too much. I definitely agree with DonVon about not over estimating your competition, because when I came in to the office there was about 25 other interviewees from top universities (ivy league, etc) but at the end of the day, even the interviewers mentioned how 6 months in there won't be any difference between the kids from harvard and other schools, since everyone is smart enough to get the work done. In my 8 interviews during the superday there was only about 4 questions that I hadn't prepared for. I found that that thought of going into the interview was the worst after some of the stories i heard as opposed to the actual interviews. When it was all said and done I only had 1 superday at a BB and got the offer I wanted, so I couldn't have asked for anything more.
Informing! Thanks for sharing
I'm gonna call bullshit on spending 300 hours preparing. As someone who actually spent that amount of hours studying for the CFA, I can tell you it takes months to reach that level of hours and would be a complete waste of time if you were only doing it for interview prep.
Preparing for an IB interview (or Fall recruiting season in general) shouldn't take more than 5-10 hours. Brush up on your technicals, learn about the company and past transactions and have solid answers for the fit questions.
Other than that, good post. I'm on the tail end of Fall recruiting (a number of MM banks are still in the early stages of the process) so hopefully it works out for me in the end.
If you have already taken valuation courses then maybe 5-10 hours is all you need. I probably did 60-80 hours in the 10 days leading up to my interview. But when I started I couldn't have walked you through a DCF, because I hadn't taken valuations. So it probably just depends on where you are in the process.
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