Equity Research Summer Associate

My networking started well before I applied. During my sophomore year, about a year before the application opened, I visited the office with a club from school, met one of the employees, and stayed in touch with her. Right after I submitted my application in October of my junior year, we had a coffee chat over the phone. I also found about six alumni from my university on LinkedIn and set up calls with each of them. They were fairly junior, so I’m not sure any of them formally referred me, but they offered to put in a good word if they could. More importantly, those calls taught me about the firm’s culture and what to prepare for in interviews, so I went in with very specific points to make and people I could mention by name.

Soon after applying, I received a HireVue. Two weeks later, I had a first-round Zoom interview with a Senior Associate. It was scheduled for 30 minutes but ran a full hour, which isn’t typical, because he worked through his entire question bank. It was also fairly technical. That was on a Tuesday. On Friday, I got an email inviting me to a 30-minute final round the following Monday with the COO of Equity Research. That conversation was mostly behavioral and focused on my fit and qualifications. A little under two weeks later, I got a call with the offer.