2021 Summer Analyst Program for Hong Kong/Singapore

At most firms the juniors can help a bit.

Some firms the analysts screen resume while in others they can shoot HR a short note to help you score a few more points at least.

The main issue is it can backfire you if you are not a mainland Chinese and not used to the mainland Chinese culture.

Actually 90%+ of mainland Chinese will not respond to you anyway unless you are 1) also mainland Chinese (they will just ignore your email for networking if your name does not look mainland Chinese) and 2) having ties such as same high school / undergraduate university or family connection

Occasionally you can find someone who can offer you some tips / advice (but may/may not offer you referral) but sometimes there are toxic people who forward networking emails, laughing at kids trying too hard to beg for internships. At my old firm, there were toxic VP who read out "I am interested in investment banking" in cover letter loud and start non-stop laughing.

I would say nice / toxic people are both rare and most will just ignore your email even you followed up. But if you don't have any ties, better not to try casting a net too wide to avoid these toxic people.

There is a strong preference for mainland Chinese though. At my old BB, they hired 20+ interns this year, only 2 are Hongkies and the rest are mainland Chinese (no Southeast Asian/Korean). You will be tested Chinese very hard during interview and internship. If Chinese is not good enough to translate an English written investment highlights into impactful Chinese ones, then you may better avoid doing IB in HK.

Given your Singaporean ties, I would recommend trying to reach out to Singaporean/Hongkie bankers in HK, preferably with westernized education more than just an undergraduate degree. These people are more used to networking mentality and will take you more seriously.

I have worked in SG and HK. Hope you can land a decent position in HK. Finance in SG is painful I know

Completed internship at a top BB in HK this past week and might be able to add some more color to this discussion. I go to a US target while most of my peers either went to local schools like HKU or semi-targets in the states. Not sure if that helped during the recruiting process (or off-set my less-than native reading/writing skills). I speak like a native mainlander due to my family background and can translate decently well from Mandarin to English, just not the other way around at a high level. For example, I could provide meeting notes during Mandarin DD calls, but could not efficiently translate English decks to Mandarin - this was definitely seen as a negative in my profile. 

In my class, only 2 interns were Hongkies. I got close with an analyst towards the end and was told that Chinese ability is so important that certain kids with "elite" Mandarin language abilities were able to secure the return offer purely based on that front, despite severely lacking technical abilities. One intern could barely use MS Office but came from Qinghua/Beida and secured the offer - you get the idea. On the other hand, my personality and work quality was praised by enough people on the floor that they were able to look past the less-than native language level and give me the offer. From my experience, if your language ability is similar to mine, then you definitely need to work a bit harder by delivering work that is at a higher quality than a majority of your peers.

If anyone in this thread is considering HK IBD, feel free to DM me and I might be able to offer some advice from the perspective of someone who just completed an internship here.